‘Did he come?’
‘Don’t interrupt. Please, Karanja, go on,’ several voices cried.
‘Well, they did not see anyone else that Sunday. They were all annoyed. On the following day, they got a letter that was actually dropped by a flying aeroplane.’
‘What was in the letter?’
Karanja looked at them all in a lordly, knowing manner. Then he slowly said, ‘The letter came from Dedan.’
‘Haaa!’
‘In it he thanked the police because they had waited for him and had given him a better motorbike.’
‘You mean the police inspector had actually been Dedan himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘But that one was white?’
‘That’s the point. Dedan can change himself into anything - a white man, a bird, or a tree. He can also turn himself into an aeroplane. He learnt all this in the big war.’
Njoroge left school. He had now been in this new school for two years. In spite of difficulties at home he had managed to go on. With equal good luck he would eventually get what he wanted. He went home thinking about Karanja’s story. He knew that it was exaggerated but still there might be an element of truth in it. Stranger things had been said to happen. He had heard his father and Kamau say that Kimathi could do very wonderful things. He must surely be a great man to elude all the keen vigilance of the white man.
He reached home. The three huts put up hurriedly stood before him. This was his new home – his home since they were asked to quit Jacobo’s land. They had been years of struggle with Ngotho without a job and Boro much more changed and withdrawn than ever. Had it not been for Kori and Kamau he did not know what they could have done. Jacobo had now been made a chief. He moved with one or two policemen always by his side, carrying guns to protect him against the Ihii cia mutitu (Freedom Boys of the Forest). The chief went from one hut to the next checking and patrolling. Sometimes he went around with the new district officer. The new DO was actually Mr Howlands himself.
A small bush hid the courtyard from immediate view. Behind him the land of Nganga, their new landlord, sloped gently, merging with some tall gum trees farther down. Njoroge was tired, for his new school was five miles away from home. And he had to do all that journey on foot. This was what education meant to thousands of boys and girls in all the land. Schools were scarce and very widely spaced. Independent and Kikuyu Karing’a schools, which had been built by the people after a break with the missions, had been closed by the government, and this made the situation worse.
There was nobody in the courtyard. The sun had already set and the usual evening breeze that came between sunset and total darkness was absent. The whole land looked deceptively calm. Njoroge stood for a moment, made uneasy by this quiet atmosphere that preceded darkness. At first he did not hear anything. Then he strained his ears and heard a murmur of voices in Njeri’s hut. It was very cold and dark. There was no sign of food anywhere, and he became colder and more hungry.
He went to Njeri’s hut.
The whole family was gathered there. Njoroge saw the dark face of his father. His face always wore something akin to a frown ever since that strike. Behind him was Kamau, who stood leaning against a post. Further on, hidden in a shadowy corner and sitting on a bed, were his two mothers. Njoroge went right in and the gloom in the room caught him at once.
‘Sit down!’ Ngotho quietly ordered him.
It was unnecessary for Njoroge was already preparing to sit down. As he sat he turned his eyes to the left. There, hidden by a shadow from the small wall that partitioned the hut, was his brother, Boro. For many months Boro had not been seen at home.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. How is it with you?’
‘It’s well, brother. How is school?’ Boro had always shown a marked interest in Njoroge’s progress at school.
‘It’s all well. How’s Nairobi? I hope you left Kori in peace.’
‘O, dear child, we hope he’s well!’ It was his father who answered him. Njoroge fearfully looked at Boro. There was silence.
Njeri said, ‘Do you think he is safe?’
‘I don’t know. He is not alone. There are many more with him.’
‘So you don’t know where the others were taken…’
‘That’s right.’ He kept on looking at the ground and then rose up unsteadily. He was a little excited. Then he sat down again and almost in a crying voice said. ‘If they should, oh, if–’
Njoroge thought Boro was mad. But just at that moment. the door opened and Kori staggered in. He wore a haggard, haunted look. He almost fell down.
‘What is it?’ the two women spoke together.
‘Water and food,’ he gasped. After a while he related his story to his surprised audience. But he first laughed.
‘Many, many will be in prison. What a waste!’ Then he turned to his brother. ‘So you are one of the three who escaped?’
‘We were five.’
‘They said you were terrorists.’
‘How did you–?’
‘After they took us to the field, I lost you. Then you escaped, and the police became more vigilant and even beat some people. Before daybreak, we were put into trucks. We did not know where we were being taken. I feared that we might be killed. This feeling became stronger when we came to a forest and the truck in which I was slowed down. I immediately got the idea that I should jump, which I did. They were taken by surprise and before they could fire, I had vanished into the forest. Look at my knee–’
They crowded around him – all except Boro who remained wrapped in thought. The knee was tied with a dirty piece of cloth and when he removed it, they could see where the sands had eaten in.
‘Ha, ha! I’ve no idea if they went to look for me. For days I’ve been travelling like you, only I got a lift by a lorry driver.’
‘Why do they oppress the black people?’ Njeri asked bitterly. She was growing old. Her days of poverty and hardship were being made heavier by this anxiety. But just now her heart was a little lighter.
They talked in whispers far into the night.
‘They want to oppress people before Jomo comes out. They know he’ll win the case. That’s why they are afraid,’ Kori was explaining.
‘Will they let all those in detention free if he wins?’
‘Oh, yes. All of them. And Wiyathi will come.’
Ngotho did not speak much. He sat in his own corner and Njoroge could not tell if he was listening to what was going on. Ngotho was changing. Soon after the strike Boro quarrelled much with the old man. He accused him of having spoilt everything by his rash action in spite of Kiarie’s warning. Boro clearly had contempt for Ngotho. But he had never expressed it in words except on those two occasions. Since then, he had become more critical of Ngotho. Ngotho, as a result, had diminished in stature, often assuming a defensive secondary place whenever talking with his sons and their friends. For months he had remained in this position, often submitting unflinchingly to his son. And then Boro thought that he could make the old man submit to his will. But Ngotho made a determined resistance. He would not take the Mau Mau oath at his son’s hands or instruction. There had been a bitter quarrel and Boro had stayed for a long time without coming home.
9
Everyone knew that Jomo would win. God would not let His people alone. The children of Israel must win. Many people put all their hopes on this eventual victory. If he lost, then the black people of Kenya had lost. Some of his lawyers had even come from England.
Much rain fell at Kipanga and the country around on the eve of the judgement day. People were happy in all the land. The rain was a good omen. Black folk were on trial. The spirit of black folk from Demi na Mathathi was on trial. Would it be victorious? It was the growing uncertainty of the answer that made people be afraid and assert more and more aggressively that a victory would surely follow.
At school a little argument ensued. It was begun by Karanja.
Karanja came from Ndeiya next to the Masai country. He said, �
��Jomo is bound to win. Europeans fear him.’
‘No. He can’t win. My father said so last night.’
‘Your father is a homeguard,’ another boy retorted.
The two boys began a quarrel. Another discussion arose somewhere else.
‘The homeguards with their white masters. They are as bad as Mau Mau.’
‘No. Mau Mau is not bad. The Freedom Boys are fighting against white settlers. Is it bad to fight for one’s land? Tell me that.’
‘But they cut black men’s throats.’
‘Those killed are the traitors! Black white settlers.’
‘What’s Mau Mau?’ Njoroge asked. He had never known what it was and his curiosity overcame his fear of being thought ignorant.
Karanja, who had just joined the group, said, ‘It is a secret Kiama. You “drink” the oath. You become a member. The Kiama has its own soldiers who are fighting for the land. Kimathi is the leader.’
‘Not Jomo?’ a small boy with one bad eye asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Karanja continued. ‘But father says that Kimathi is the leader of the Freedom Army and Jomo is the leader of KAU. I like KAU and fear Mau Mau.’
‘But they are all the same. Fighting for the freedom of the black people.’ This was said by a tall but weak boy. Then with a distant look in his eyes, ‘I would like to fight in the forest.’
All eyes were turned on him. He seemed to have said a very profound thing. Or seemed to have put in words what most of them felt. A solemn air hung over all the group. Then one other boy broke the silence by saying, ‘I too would like to fight. I would love to carry a big gun like my father used to do in the big war when he fought for the British. Now I would be fighting for the black folk–’
‘Hurrah and victory for the black folk!’
‘Hurrah and victory for Jomo–’
‘It rained last night.’
The bell went, the group dispersed. They rushed back for their evening classes.
That night Njoroge learnt that Jomo lost. His spirit fell and he felt something queer in his stomach. He did not know what to think.
‘But it was all arranged,’ Kori explained.
They all gathered in Njeri’s hut, now together only for comfort. In the morning people would not say Kwa Heri (good-bye) at parting for fear of contemplating what such a farewell might imply. It might mean ‘Forever, farewell’. Ngotho himself lived in fear for his family because Jacobo who had now become the most powerful man in the land had never forgiven him. He knew that sooner or later the chief would retaliate. Perhaps he was biding his time.
What did he live for now? His days were full of weariness. He had no longer the waiting to sustain him. The fulfilment of the prophecy seemed to be impossible. Perhaps he had blundered in going on strike. For he had now lost every contact with his ancestral land. The communion with the spirits who had gone before him had given him vitality. But what could he have done? He had to go on strike. He had not wanted to be accused by a son anymore, because when a man was accused by the eyes of his son who had been to war and had witnessed the death of a brother, he felt guilty. But Ngotho had always wanted to be gentle with Boro because he knew that the son must have been sorely tried in the war. The something that had urged him to fight against Jacobo certainly had no logic. But it alienated Boro further still.
Ngotho often wondered if he had really done well by his sons. If he and his generation had failed, he was ready to suffer for it…But whatever Ngotho had been prepared to do to redeem himself in the eyes of his children, he would not be ordered by a son to take the oath. Not that he objected to it in principle. After all, oath-taking as a means of binding a person to a promise was a normal feature of tribal life. But to be given by a son! That would have undermined his standing as a father. A lead in that direction could come only from him, the head of the family. Not from a son; not even if he had been to many places and knew many things. That gave him no right to reverse the custom and tradition for which he and those of his generation stood. And yet he felt the loss of the land even more keenly than Boro, for to him it was a spiritual loss. When a man was severed from the land of his ancestors, where would he sacrifice to the Creator? How could he come into contact with the founders of the tribe, Gikuyu and Mumbi? What did Boro know of oaths, of ancient rites, of the spirits of the ancestors? Still the estrangement cut deeper and deeper into Ngotho’s life, emaciating him daily.
To him, too, Jomo had been his hope. Ngotho had come to think that it was Jomo who would drive away the white men. To him Jomo stood for custom and tradition purified by grace of learning and much travel. But now he was defeated. Things had clearly gone against him in his old age; Jacobo, a chief, and Howlands, a DO. And he was also estranged from a son of his own skin and blood. Could he now put his faith in the youngest of the sons? But did Njoroge understand what was happening? But then who understood anything anyway?
Again that night they spoke in whispers. Boro sat in his own corner and seemed more withdrawn than ever.
‘It was to be expected,’ Kori said again.
Nyokabi said, ‘I knew he would lose. I always said that all white men are the same. His lawyers must have been bribed.’
‘It is more than that,’ said Njeri. ‘And although I am a woman and cannot explain it, it seems all clear as daylight. The white man makes a law or a rule. Through that rule or law or whatever you may call it, he takes away the land and then imposes many laws on the people concerning that land and many other things, all without people agreeing first as in the old days of the tribe. Now a man rises and opposes that law which made right the taking away of land. Now that man is taken by the same people who made the laws against which that man was fighting. He is tried under those alien rules. Now tell me who is that man who can win even if the angels of God were his lawyers…I mean.’
Njeri was panting. Njoroge had never heard her speak for such a long time. Yet there seemed to be something in what she had said. Everyone looked at her. Tears were on her face. Boro was now speaking. But it was a lamentation.
‘…All white people stick together. But we black people are very divided. And because they stick together, they’ve imprisoned Jomo, the only hope we had. Now they’ll make us slaves. They took us to their wars and they killed all that was of value to us…’
Njoroge convulsively clutched the seat more firmly with his hands. All the wrong done to the people was concentrated in the plaintive voice of Boro. Njoroge felt ready to do anything to right those wrongs. But inside himself he was afraid.
All of a sudden, Boro stood and almost shouted, ‘Never! never! Black people must rise up and fight.’
Njoroge’s eyes dilated. Nyokabi held her breath while Njeri turned her eyes fearfully towards the door.
10
The office was a small rectangular building with a roof of red tiles. But around the main office were other buildings, some made of stone and corrugated iron roofs. A small village of huts built of grass thatched roofs and whitewashed mud walls completed the whole police garrison. Around the garrison was a fence of barbed wire.
Mr Howlands sat in the office with his left elbow on the table with the palm of the hand supporting his head. He held a pencil in his right hand with which he kept on tapping the table while he gazed out through the small open glass window with a strained expression. Looking at him, one would have thought that he was gazing at the huts that made the police quarters. His mind was far away back into his childhood, in the small rectangular hedge outside his home and the boys with whom he used to play. The joys, fears, and hopes of childhood were grand in their own way. The little quarrels he had had; the father whom he had feared and revered; the gentle mother in whose arms he could always find solace and comfort – all these at times assaulted his memory, especially in these troubled times. And yet these were the things he had all along wanted to shut from his life.
He stood and walked across the office, wrapped in thought. He now knew maybe there was no escape. The present that
had made him a DO reflected a past from which he had tried to run away. That past had followed him even though he had tried to avoid politics, government, and anything else that might remind him of that betrayal. But his son had been taken away…It was no good calling on the name of God, for he, Howlands, did not believe in God. There was only one god for him – and that was the farm he had created, the land he had tamed. And who were these Mau Mau who were now claiming that land, his god? Ha, ha! He could have laughed at the whole ludicrous idea but for the fact that they had forced him into the other life, the life he had tried to avoid. He had been called upon to take up a temporary appointment as a district officer. He had agreed. But only because this meant defending his god. If Mau Mau claimed the only thing he believed in, they would see!
Did they want to drive him back to England, the forgotten land? They were mistaken. Who were black men and Mau Mau anyway, he asked for the thousandth time. Mere savages! A nice word – savages. Previously he had not thought of them as savages or otherwise, simply because he had not thought of them at all, except as a part of the farm – the way one thought of donkeys or horses in his farm except that in the case of donkeys and horses one had to think of their food and a place for them to sleep.
The strike that had made him lose Ngotho and now brought about the emergency had forced him to think to move out of his shell. But they all would pay for this! Yes, he would wring from every single man the last drop till they had all been reduced to nothingness, till he had won a victory for his god. The Mau Mau had come to symbolise all that which he had tried to put aside in life. To conquer it would give him a spiritual satisfaction, the same sort of satisfaction he had got from the conquest of his land. He was like a lion that was suddenly woken from his lair.
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