The Present Moment

by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

  ‘There is no need to shout, Mrs Mwamba,’ she insisted, turning towards the man. ‘This is a private institution, you know, but if there is anyone in particular you want to visit, perhaps I can direct you.’

  The man saluted her, turned about and marched off. Rahel did not wake up and Wairimu, looking out for a bit of fun, was afraid to detain him under Priscilla’s disapproving gaze.

  ‘My madam,’ Priscilla murmured, ‘would never have anyone turned away from the house roughly. She used to say that in one place or another we were all strangers and pilgrims.’ And tried to remember what it was like not to be a stranger, a sojourner.

  ‘Mrs Mwamba’. So that was her name. The second marriage – no one would expect it to have the excitement of the first. But it was as though a madness had seized her. For centuries her people had lived at a few miles’ distance from pagans and savages, traded with them, sometimes converted them, even married with their women and yet preserved their distance. One had seen, closer and closer to the town as people moved in to work or strike their bargains, the frenzied dances in which they abandoned themselves to the spirits – jini, pepo, mwazindika.

  And now it was as though a spirit had taken hold of her. She was nearly thirty when Ali died, an experienced woman, mother of three, surrounded by respectable kinsfolk and in-laws. She banked the compensation money in her little red book and let them think she had used it all on the mourning ceremonies. One day, she thought, Hassan would need it to learn his way into the new world. Once the prescribed hundred and thirty days of mourning were over, her people would have made proper provision for her. The Prophet (Peace be upon him) had himself married a thriving widow; when one is skilled one does not need also to be passionate. There is fertility, housewifely competence, an adequate income. Why need one go mad as well?

  Fatuma – the handsome young Fatuma who still dwelt within Sophia – went on refusing to have a marriage arranged for her, saying that she was still weeping for the loss of Ali. Probably it was so: she could not recreate the memory. Hassan was going to school – not to madrasa but what one now considered ‘proper’ school, wearing neat shirt and shorts. Mariam was attending private classes in the home of an Ismaili Muslim lady. Hawa was two years old, mumbling and singing all day among the bright pieces of cloth on the floor. Because of the war, ships could not be spared to bring in fashionable clothes as they used to do. Stocks of cloth in the shops were running down. So every lady wanted sewing done, and if you had hoarded some pretty pieces, meant for your growing daughters, you could get a high price for them, as well as for making up the dull, market cloth in decorative styles.

  Fatuma’s sisters and cousins hovered about to protect her modesty, and Ali’s workmates came, two by two, to offer their condolences and, later on, to see how she was getting on and bring sweets or cashew nuts for the children out of their now healthy wage packets, for wars make money. Among them came the accordion player and, with him, the Christian friend who had taught him to play. And this time her eyes dropped and her hand trembled, holding the coffee cups. The new world was coming, they said. India would soon be free of the British. Our own soldiers had taken Ethiopia from the Italians and handed it back to the little black Emperor, while British generals and ambassadors stood smiling by. Kenya needed dockers now and next time they made a strike, after the war, their demands would be accepted. She smiled and tried to think about Kenya. She had been a short way up and down the coast but never a dozen miles inland. But some of the women she talked with in the market had come from as far as Kisumu, two nights’ journey on the train, to visit their husbands working in the docks. All this was Kenya and all those people were Kenya too. Ali used to say so.

  She seemed to see Henry all the time. She met him in the bazaar, looking for dresses for his little daughter. His wife had died with her second baby and the girl stayed with her granny, at the home place. She found him playing the accordion at an open day in Hassan’s school. His Swahili was very good. He would come to the Old Town for shopping and chance upon her calling out to the water-seller, or buying thread or fetching Mariam from her class. One day he asked if he could go and see her father.

  She was even more flustered than other times he called. Why should he want to see her father? To talk about dowry, he said, since he had no brother or uncle here to send for him. Because of losing his first wife he might not be able to offer very much, but he wanted to do the right thing. Only, of course, he added, looking at her very hard, his wife would have to become a Christian.

  She could not now remember whether she had stormed or wept, for in all her hopeful imaginings no such demand had ever crossed her mind. Did he want her to go away, then, to some distant, dusty place, far from the sea and the coconuts and the call to prayer?

  No, he conceded. Mombasa was a good place to stay and work. His little girl could be brought here and go to school with Mariam and Hawa. For of course he would insist on their going to school. If he went home, the children of her other husband might bring a difficulty, but his parents would not object to their staying in Mombasa, might even make a visit. Only, he was a baptised Christian and – he swallowed hard: she took the point, not circumcised – and so he was not offering to take her as a concubine but a legal wife in church who would bear his name and be proud of it. He had a steady job and a decent house to offer her. Hard and angular she knew it would be, after the old home, but fashionable by the standards of the time; as more and more workers came into the city, houses were even more at a premium than in 1939. She hung her head and said that she would come to look at the house.

  Of course there was no question of going to see her father. To him infidel dowry would be an insult, and she had already been rebuked for receiving visitors too freely. Then one evening Hassan did not come home from school. He had been rude and moody for some months now. She understood the difficulty of a boy without a father. After searching frantically in the neighbourhood of the school, she found her father had collected the boy and sent him to live with her brother in Kilifi. However much she stormed, she was told, the Kadhi would uphold the transfer of a believing boy to a believing household. Her mind had been made up for her. That night she told Henry she was moving in with him.

  To her astonishment, he refused. He said he did not want to sin, which she did not understand, or to do anything to put himself in danger of the courts, which she understood. He transferred her and the children to the home of a married neighbour of his to learn the customs, attend church classes and have the banns called. Her bridges were burned now. Anything could happen.

  With a docility foreign to her nature, Fatuma learned what lessons were set for her and severed the links with her old life. Hassan was nearly a man now and she knew her brother would not let him go. Mariam was eleven and would surely soon be betrothed. She had left her classes now and helped with the plain seams, but she was restless and unreliable. There were whispers in the old town that she wandered too much while her mother was in the bazaar. A move would be good for her, but the idea of school would not go down easily. She was rude to Damaris whose house they lived in for a while, but Damaris was gentle and did not protest. Henry bought food for them all, and the father of the house did not bring in much. Mariam sat quiet while Henry told her stories about Issa – for she already knew something of Musa and Ibrahim and Nuhu – but Hawa laughed and played at being Zacchaeus up the tree or at lowering the sick man through the roof, and sang the new songs with gusto.

  Sophia remembered getting her new name and promising truly to make a new life. The wedding was strange to her, in an ugly white dress, with people singing songs that still seemed to her untuneful and gathering outside to shake her hand. She had only a hazy recollection of the ceremony, but she had moved into Henry’s house and they were happy together.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Ladies,’ announced Matron, in a voice that compelled attention wherever the old people might be hiding away, dozing, pottering in the garden, knitting or counting the minutes
till TV time, ‘I have brought you a new visitor. The usual padre is away on leave and he has sent the Rev. Andrew from Uganda to pray with you today. I am sure you will give him a nice welcome. Now, you will excuse me, Reverend, because the book-work to keep this sort of place running is heavier than you can possibly imagine; I can get on with it at a time like this, you see, when I can be sure they are all healthily occupied.’

  The records were, indeed, orderly and up-to-date, and it was not often that an old lady would intrude upon the work of keeping them so, unless in case of accident or a sudden bout of illness. In fact, since breakfast and supper were served to the residents on time, their private food allowances for other meals issued like clockwork, surgery held every morning and clothes and bedding inspected once a month, they had little cause to disturb Matron. Since they could move in the daytime as far as their strength permitted, there were other neighbours who could hear their whispered confidences, a message delivered through the church from some old friend, a private visitor or a strikingly successful act of barter. Matron contrived in the course of the week what she thought of as a private chat with each of the thirty old ladies and what they regarded as a trick interview to find out whether they were approaching the institution’s limit of physical or mental degradation. This was not fair on their part since, unless they became spectacularly noisy or incontinent, Matron would stretch the rules as far as possible to keep her flock in healthy and familiar surroundings – witness Rahel lying so often inert on her bed and Bessie sobbing at night for the full-grown baby she said was snatched from her.

  It was rumoured that Matron had been taken to England for a course and, the missionaries sometimes suggested with a grin, instructed in the management of Women’s Institutes. (Only Priscilla, among the residents, had an inkling of what amused them.) Certainly she had cultivated a sort of kindness which it was difficult anywhere to lay hands on. The racier of the old ladies speculated – but quietly – on how the long-dead husband had ever managed to get on her two sets of twins, all of whom made discreet Sunday visits in spotless little cars with well-turned-out spouses and children. Not even Wairimu knew their names.

  ‘She thinks we’d be entertaining our boyfriends if we didn’t always have somebody’s eye on us,’ giggled Wairimu, shoving the pastor in the direction of the best chair. It was a licence of speech that was allowed her as the eldest, though she felt she might have claimed it anyway as having the best features. She had to admit that Sophia was well-preserved, but some of these uncouth old women ran to fat if not to wrinkles. Not Priscilla, of course, but no one would have imagined Priscilla sticking her neck out in any circumstances.

  ‘Well, naturally,’ the young padre replied with a easy smile, ‘a set of beautiful girls like you can’t be too careful.’

  The old ladies cackled appreciatively.

  Getting them quiet, he spoke very simply about the fiery trial in Uganda during ancient and modern days, the strain put upon Kikuyu Christians in Emergency years, and Satan still like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He gave thanks for their place of domestic safety as second best to an individual home, but reminded them that there was no spiritual safety zone, that even the strains of living in community led to the lonely forest edge where you could be asked what side you were on. Just because of their loneliness – for the company of age-mates could not, he knew, take away the longing for children and grandchildren – they had wisdom and experience to share with younger neighbours, and he urged them to make that offering of love, because many young people were also deprived of the full affection of their families. And Christian love was always ministering to the present moment, not to past sorrows or future fears.

  They nodded assent. This was a message that came close to them and they prayed and were blessed and sent the steadiest-footed among them to collect tea from the kitchen. It was laid on every Wednesday, in case they should come to blows in deciding who was to entertain the preacher.

  ‘Your Swahili is very good,’ said Mama Chungu. ‘We should not know that you were a Ugandan. Have you lived here long?’

  ‘No, I am just studying here for a year. But you see I actually had a Kenyan father. I did not know him, but my mother said I was to be called Waitito after a grandfather.’

  There were ooohs and aaahs from several of the old ladies, while others busied themselves with pouring out and passing the cups of tea. Wairimu tried to question the pastor in Kikuyu, but he shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  ‘So your father,’ asked Priscilla, hardly raising her eyes from the Kikuyu Bible where she had been trying to find a place, ‘where was he from? Kiambu, Murang’a, Nyeri?’

  ‘I do not know,’ replied the padre, ‘and I am sorry not to know. My mother told me that he had been a priest and had run away, but I think perhaps he was just studying to be a priest and had left the college. She thought he was going to marry her, but he left her a little while before I was born. But whether it was true or just an excuse not to get married, whether they caught and disciplined him, perhaps returned him to Kenya, or whether he went back and confessed to having lived with my mother, I never knew. She died when I was seven and I went into a Protestant orphanage and was educated there, and so was led into the ministry. And I do not think I shall run away.’

  Priscilla was looking at him intently. She was known to be a most militant Protestant, so the others supposed her to be wondering how the illegitimate son of a priest could be in a position to preach.

  ‘You were in Kampala, then?’ asked Nekesa. ‘I was in Kampala myself from 1953 to 1960, and I speak Luganda because my stepfather was from Uganda. I used to trade in that market at the foot of Namirembe Hill. Perhaps you were a little boy there with your mother?’

  ‘Indeed, you could have known my mother. Her name was Nellie. She told me I was born in the country, but I cannot remember anything before our little room in Kampala. I suppose in those days a family in the countryside would feel very much ashamed of a child like me. I never knew my grandparents. I sat beside my mother when she haggled over goods in the street, and often stayed alone at night. When she collapsed by the roadside one day – I think now she must have been having another baby, but it was never explained to me – they took us to Mulago Hospital and I hung around there till she died. And then I was taken to the orphanage and never, never spoke of these things until I was saved by the Lord Jesus.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nekesa quietly, ‘in the Lord one can speak. I may even have known her. But there is a rivalry among young women, as you know, and also a sort of – privacy, I suppose, abstaining from asking questions. It is the only sort of privacy one can hope for. I might have landed up like her if I’d had kids. That really puts a limit on what a girl can get, living as we had to, and so people drive themselves to a breakdown. But I never had a child. I’d had to look after myself from an early age, since my mother could never stick to a man. I was brought up in Nairobi, so I knew how to speak Kikuyu, and it was difficult for us women on our own to prove who we were, even though I was in my thirties by the Mau Mau time and thought I knew the ropes. I suppose my own father must have retired from the railway by then. In any case he would not have known me, for I was only about ten, and my brother younger, when he chased my mother away with us. Later my mother went off to Busia somewhere, and my stepfather had no time for me anyway. So Kampala seemed a good place to go during the curfew years. It was a good place, too, with money around like dirt, fancy shops that made us blink, not much colour bar. I think it’s not like that now.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Pastor Andrew. ‘Now it is the bright lights of Nairobi that dazzle us all. But why did you come back?’

  ‘I was not saved then,’ continued Nekesa, ‘and I was still on the game. Sorry to refer to it, Reverend, but if a man saves you out of a well it is good to know how far you had fallen when you thank him, isn’t it? But by 1960 I was pushing forty, not able to compete with the young ones, and I’d learned how to trade in combs, mirrors, handkerchiefs,
that kind of thing. Business was more advanced in Uganda than here, you see. We knew things were going to get better in Kenya, with Uhuru just round the corner, so I thought it best to come in early. Maybe a few little troubles I had with the Kampala police helped me to make up my mind. Of course we did not know how difficult things were going to get for Kenyans in Uganda later on. But in my case the Lord was waiting for me here in Nairobi. Not that I was ready to listen, though I was trading straight and fair at Machakos bus stop, but when I went to hospital the first time He saved me, and from then on I kept myself clean and decent until I was too sick to work. They brought me here three years ago when all my stock and savings were used up. Tukutendereza, let us praise the Lord. That much Luganda we all know.’

  The ladies resumed their chatter and the pastor excused himself promising to come again, and took leave of them one by one. Priscilla followed him quietly out of doors, and with an instinctive courtesy the others turned to putting the chairs back and arranging the tea things.

  ‘So your father may still be alive?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘It may be so. I have no means of knowing.’

  ‘I hope you pray for him. You have the look of someone I used to know. Even a great sinner can be helped to repent.’

  ‘It is so, my mother. May God be with you now.’

  Priscilla turned away to hide her tears. If my old employer had taken me to England as I once asked, she thought rebelliously, perhaps I should have visited the Women’s Institutes too and built a hedge round myself to keep the feelings out of sight. Complaining that the dust in the compound had quite spoilt her sandals, she spent a long time closed in the shower compartment scrubbing them noisily.

  Yet even Mrs Bateson, calm and sensible as she ordinarily was, Priscilla remembered, would look restless and heavy-eyed on some mornings when she took up the early tea, particularly when there were violent incidents in the news, but also on some undefined days which she thought might have been birthdays or anniversaries. And when Priscilla asked respectfully,