Wau would not enter the same room with her, refused any maintenance, urged the children to forget they ever had a granny, only to worship the saintly memory of their mother. It was an evil spirit from the past, he said, that had turned Sophia against her own Christian profession and everything that had followed from it. She had complained the evening before, he said, that the food was too bland and foreign. That was why she had taken it into her head to start cooking as an excuse for setting the fire. She had laughed at the children for wearing European, not Muslim, clothes, and had taunted her son-in-law that she could employ him as a hired driver. Hearing all this at second-hand, she sobbed again, screwing up her wrappers until they tore, withdrawing into a fold of blanket as though it gave her the privacy of a buibui.
Truly, she had not much relished the supper, but it was not for her, as a dependant, to grumble. Only because the children had asked, she had told them stories of her early years, what people wore, what they ate, how they celebrated great days. Even nowadays in Eastleigh, she had told them, you could find goats painted pink and blue to be sacrificed instead of Isaac. Isaac was there, right enough, in the Bible. What was the harm in that? And she had promised to show them the goats if their father would drive them over when the time of the feast came, but Wau refused to have anything to do with pagan sacrifices, and she had teased him, saying he could dress up and pretend to be her hired driver if he was ashamed to be seen with his own flesh and blood, but she, though she put faith in the blood of Jesus, could not pretend to be better than the parents who bore her or despise her kinsfolk who still needed to see the light. So they had parted, in a joking mood she felt, and never met again. The court said there was no case for her to answer. She could go. But go where?
Her parental family had cut themselves off from her long ago. Her son Hassan had become a fanatical Muslim, denouncing her conversion, and she did not even know his address. Mariam had gone away to live with her prospective in-laws in 1945. She had sent a message when her first child was born, but it was rumoured that she had been divorced and remarried on one of the islands. Sophia had no idea where she might be. There was nothing to be hoped for in going back to Mombasa.
Sophia declared that she had a bank savings book with over ten thousand shillings in it, but of course that had been destroyed in the fire. The police made enquiries at her Mombasa bank, but no deposit could be traced in any of the names she had ever used. Wau, she maintained, must have got hold of her money and destroyed the evidence. She had no claim on insurance for the house. She was sixty-three at the time of the fire and had no resources for starting another business even if she could have pulled herself together enough to do so. Her personal sewing machine had been burned with the rest. She had never been employed by anyone and even her best friends did not suppose that she could learn to take orders now. The one advantage she had lay in being a convert. She was asked to tell the story many times before boards and committees. As a result she had been admitted to the Refuge and had stayed there eight years, although she was younger and stronger than some of the other residents.
In truth Fatuma had become a Christian, attended baptism classes, been sprinkled with the water and taken her new name because Henry had wished it. She could not honestly say that there had been a hunger for a new faith in her before her appreciation of Henry as a good man and one meant for her. On the other hand she had no doubt that God had sent Henry to be her prophet. Henry was a follower of Issa and she already knew that Issa, whom she would learn to call Jesus, was to be revered. Perhaps it would have been easier to resist the change if she had been a boy and had received all the systematic teaching of Islam. But she was a girl and had picked up her notions of faith along the way, so that the systematic catechism in Bible classes presented a new challenge to her understanding and fell into place bit by bit. More than that, it did not forbid her the pillars, the angels, the foundations of righteousness, the social virtues of charity and compassion to which she had been brought up. It amplified them into a wider charity, a more intimate worship, a framework of forgiveness. As well as celebrating the unloosing of Isaac, it commemorated the unloosing of all through the everlasting son of Abraham. Gradually Sophia came to comprehend these mysteries as well as subscribe to them, and something changed in her and witnessed through her.
But now, as she looked back, the flames flickered in between and the words became a habit in which she still trusted but without delight, and that part of her life no longer seemed real with the urgency of the old town years.
Hawa and her husband prospered. Children were born to them. Wau was transferred to the Nairobi office of his company and Hawa was able to set her feet on the civil service ladder. By 1963 they were living in Ofafa Jerusalem, modelled on an English council estate with fences between the little back gardens. By 1970 they had a house in Woodley, once a sop to the colonial lower middle class. This was where they took Sophia to live with them when the doctor warned her of hypertension. Her business had been running down as factory garments came into competition with local tailors’ work. The crippled machinist had died and the man who replaced him demanded higher wages. Her cousin’s brood of children spread all over the house, and the eldest came under suspicion when one day the cashbox was found broken and empty. When a new school failed to collect and pay for the uniforms it had ordered she had to break into the bank savings, and medicines and visits to a private doctor bit into the dowry money.
When they persuaded her at last to move to Nairobi, Sophia refused to sell up her home. She feared that the move might not be peaceful. Besides, the company was expanding to uncivilised and inaccessible places. What would become of her health and sensibilities if Wau were transferred to Busia, say, or Kisii? So the niece rented the house, the furniture and the spare machine at a low rate which Wau was to collect for his mother-in-law when he flew down to Mombasa on business every two or three months. But Asha, with every year a new mouth to feed, was often unable to pay in full. After a couple of years Wau found the machine and the furniture gone, the house deserted except for a couple of street boys who had established themselves on the verandah, the structure hardly fit any longer to ask a rent for and rate demands piling up unheeded for who knew how long.
Sophia never believed him. She was always about to make the journey to see for herself, but she had never been on a train and the prospect of an all-day bus journey daunted her more than she would admit. When the Waus had brought her up by car in 1970 she had seen for the first time the scrub country and the inland hills. And when disaster came, she was left penniless and shaken, the curtain of fire coming down, as had previously the curtain of water, to obscure all that went before. Now day after day was the same, except for the quarterly medical check-up and the pills that made her feel more delicate, each time they were changed, than the older women. If she thought back, it was to the sunny scented days, hemmed in by the sea and the fearful angels.
Three days later the newspapers reported that Samuel Kamau was helping the police with their enquiries into the murder, and though the case against him was not complete, it looked strong. He was known to have accosted Joseph Baraka Wau outside the Faculty Library on the day before the murder, seized him roughly by the coat, and threatened to beat him up if he had any more to do with Miss Mary Kamau, a student nurse, Samuel’s sister. Miss Kamau admitted that she had been out on several dates with Wau but denied that intimacy had occurred and willingly underwent a clinical test to show that she was not pregnant. She had, however, complained to her brother that Wau had been avoiding her without giving any reason. Kamau admitted to having been in the Sun City Cinema in Eastleigh with some friends on the evening Wau died, although his home was far away on the Kabete Road. Witnesses could attest approximate times for his entering and leaving the cinema.
Kamau said that he had gone to town by no. 9 bus after the show and changed into a matatu on Tom Mboya Street to go home. As he lived alone, the time of his arrival could not be checked. Wau’s body had bee
n found close to the Old Ladies’ Refuge in Eastleigh where his grandmother, Mrs Sophia Mwamba, resided. The father of the deceased, Solomon Wau, however testified that none of his children knew the whereabouts of their grandmother, who had been cleared by the courts of suspicion of arson arising when her daughter and two of her grandchildren had been burned to death in 1975. The surviving grandchildren gave evidence that prior to the enquiry they had no knowledge of where their grandmother lived.
Mrs Mwamba was for the second time judged to have no case to answer. She had her bed in a cubicle shared by three other ladies and had slept normally on the night in question after taking the sedatives prescribed for her. The Refuge was surrounded by high walls and the watchman who locked and guarded the gate had not let anyone in or out. He had not heard any sounds of a struggle from the spot where the body was found, some sixty metres away as the crow flies but farther by road. As loud music was commonly heard in the area as late as 2 a.m. this would probably have masked any such sound. Mrs Mwamba had not accompanied the other ladies who went to the scene of the crime because she ‘had had enough of dead bodies’, but had broken down in distress as soon as her grandson’s name was mentioned. She said that she had not seen the boy since he was fourteen years old. She never talked about her family since the memory of past events was so painful.
No money, identity card, keys or papers had been found on the body, but robbery was not alleged to have been a major motive since an expensive leather jacket and shoes were still intact, and a watch, which appeared to have been broken on striking the ground, remained on the wrist. Enquiries had not suggested any other likely motives. The deceased was generally popular among his acquaintances and fellow students.
Gertrude and Mary, both looking pale and tired, came in their ordinary clothes to call at the Refuge. Gertrude’s skin seemed clogged, no light reflected from it any more, her hair bundled up into a plain scarf. Mary glowed more, but defiantly. The old ladies fussed around, some recognising them, others, confused, expecting them to fire questions and conjure insurance payments or new blankets out of thin air.
‘You don’t look as though you were going to take our temperatures today,’ babbled Wairimu for something to say. She knew who they were. ‘Are you bringing the babies out of the bushes round the corner then? Enough to put you off men for life, working in the delivery room, some of the girls say.’
‘No, Auntie. We haven’t finished our training in the wards yet. We just came over for a walk as we are off duty.’
‘Well, here we are, as you see. Most of us are not likely to be far away unless they send an ambulance for us, or perhaps a box. Make yourselves at home.’
The girls sought out Priscilla in her corner. She took a tighter hold of herself, knowing why they had come. For what did she know of giving comfort? Trays of tea, polished tables, beautifully ironed collars, those were her trade.
‘Mrs Njuguna,’ said Mary, after exchange of greetings. ‘We have come to you for help. It is her man and my brother. What can we do? As for the one who is gone, we knew him. We are sorry. But not overmastered by sorrow. It was he who provoked Sam to quarrel with him, but it was Sam who would choose to quarrel that way, aloud, before witnesses. It was not in him to hit in the dark and run away.’
‘The Bible says that no one knows the heart of a man except the spirit of man that is in him.’
‘But this one – this one was different.’
Are we not all different, thought Priscilla, and all sure we know it? Perhaps you too have mistaken your vocation. She thought that he would marry her, but he went away, leaving only the name Waitito for her son. They are scrabbling at the door with knives, those who swore that they would never fear the white man, and a little girl gurgles out her last bloody breath to the accompaniment of police whistles.
‘He is your brother, Mary, and your sweetheart, Gertrude. You have to believe that he is different. But there is nothing you can do for him.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Pray if you can. Go on believing when you can no longer pray. Behave as if it were so even when you no longer believe. Only that.’
‘Only that?’
‘Mary, you have a brother in danger of the law. You have said what was needful to explain his anger, but you cannot follow the course his anger followed. People are trained and paid to do the following. The pulse of shared blood confuses the signals for us. I had a brother. He was imprisoned for the same oath that led people to kill our father – truly or falsely, I do not know. They crushed his balls with pincers and he died of chill and despair in the scrapyard where, out of pity, the boss let him act as watchman. For his confidence was gone and his memory crazed by that dreadful thing to be remembered. Perhaps he did what was once not in him to do. It would not help anyone to find out now. Many years have passed. If it does you good to hear that, then listen. But it would do me no good to be surrounded by people who have heard it and add another shame to their sourness and the burden of their years.’
‘But Mrs Njuguna, we did not mean to open up another wound for you. We came because you waited for your husband, you love him. I do not know how to wait, and Mary cannot stop blaming herself.’
‘Gertrude, you love Sam: even I can see that, with my eyes dimming and my mind tight shut against emotion. Love can cast out fear but it is not written that love can bring all knowledge. You can wait. It is not so very hard to wait. Thousands do that. The hard thing is to recognise what you are waiting for when it comes and not turn away in revulsion. If Evans were to walk into this room now – old, bald, paunchy, maybe whining his sentences like a priest, or snarling like an animal that has got hold of its prey and finds it no good to eat – what good would it do me? It is my own faithfulness I have cherished, my loss rather than what I have lost. Or instead of waiting you can cut out the painful part of yourself as you medical people snip off a limb, an appendix, a passage to the womb. And then at least you have something left to build with, something a bit less than human but enough for a name, a career, a company. Many do. It is up to you.’
Gertrude was crying openly now. Mary sat as though stunned.
‘But you never told us. We did not mean to be impertinent. We admired you. We meant no harm.’
‘Child, you have not harmed me, nor did I mean to harm you, though I knew I might hurt you: better to do it now when you are so covered with wounds that no new hurt is separate from the others. I hope Sam may be innocent and proved so, but I do not think there is anything you can do about it. The more he sees you grieving, the more conscious he will be of his own grief. But do not ask me how to bear it. I have not been very good at that.’
Gertrude took Priscilla’s hand. Bessie hovered, producing a grubby piece of rag from the bosom of her dress, and the girl stood helplessly, holding it in her left hand. Nekesa, more practical, handed Mary a thick wad of tissue.
‘I will walk along with you,’ said Wairimu. ‘I am sure he is going to get off. Nothing bad will happen to him. But Priscilla is upset. She feels things deeply,’ she added in a whisper, urging them away. But she was not in time. As they went out of the main door and turned into the drive, Sophia rose from her wicker chair and bore down upon them.
‘I see it now,’ she screeched at Mary. ‘You are the one who threw herself at my grandson’s head, are you? Any cheap little nurse thinking she can ensnare a medical student. And then urging on your brother to do this – this.’
She threw her arms aloft, dramatically.
‘And you, the apple of his eye. I suppose he wanted to show you how big and tough he was? On a poor, motherless, innocent boy. Not a thought for the grieving family, not a care for anyone outside your own Kikuyu. . . .’
Matron had a firm grip on Sophia’s arm and was trying to lead her away with Mama Chungu’s help. Both girls were sobbing bitterly. Wairimu led them to the gate.
‘Don’t blame Priscilla,’ she said. ‘She is almost a European. She would think it wrong to bend even a little bit of the truth. But me
, I’m, I’m sure he’s innocent and you won’t have to wait long to know it. But remember you have a long path to tread before you come to rest here if God gives you no better. So try to be happy when you come. Some of these my sisters have already taken as much as they can bear.’
Matron managed to get Sophia to bed and called a doctor to give her a sedative injection. The Refuge seemed still to vibrate to her screams, and some of the old ladies realised how peaceful it usually was compared with the shouts, insults and alarms that bounced on the outside air of Eastleigh. Why should that be, when nearly all of them had special griefs to bring them here at last and special gifts to have survived so many griefs? Only, perhaps, that each of them had woven through the years a framework of shelter, as the Boran woman keeps the folded structure of her house on camel-back beside her, so that the tent fabric of the Refuge or any other person’s home could stretch above it without encroaching on the private place within.
The Present Moment Page 18