Who Will Catch Us As We Fall

by Iman Verjee

  With every word, Raj nodded. Admired. Respected. They were the fingers that plucked at his dream, strumming it awake.

  ‘But as long as you want to be a hero, you will never become one.’

  Raj’s excitement faltered. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘People think I’m brave for spending all those years in jail, for putting up some posters on walls and helping others, but it’s not because I’m courageous or a hero,’ Pinto explained. ‘It’s because I know what is right and I’m willing to fight for it.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  Pinto rose, dusted off his cotton-clad knees. He was a slim man, younger than Raj had thought, but there was a peculiar grace about him, an oldness of soul that Raj understood was what made Dilip Uncle say that the man was special. Back in the car now, the smile once again on his face, Pinto asked, ‘Do you know why the Africans trust me?’

  A shake of a small head, eager bristles of hair gleaming in the sun.

  ‘Because I trust them. Because we work together as equals and treat each other as such, as Kenyans fighting for the same cause. That is what’s right.’ As the car revved loudly, Pinto shouted over its sound. ‘Next time you want to ask me something, knock on my door.’ And he was gone, a cream car in a flurry of dark red dust.

  That evening at the dinner table, it emerged that Pinto was in trouble.

  Raj’s father banged his fist down. ‘Eh pagal hogaya? He’ll be killed for it, just wait and see.’

  A story was spreading through Nairobi that Pinto and his socialist comrades were plotting a parliamentary coup after their demands for a ceiling distribution of wealth and just rewards for the Mau-Mau freedom fighters was brushed off by the president, swatted away within the gold tassels of his fly whip.

  ‘He discovered that the mzee had allocated himself over fifty farms in Central Province and Rift Valley. That he will be displacing all the Kikuyu squatters and other farmers to make room for his fat cronies. No better than the colonialists,’ Dilip Uncle had said. ‘What else could he have done?’

  ‘Not called our president a bastard, for one,’ Raj’s father had replied. ‘I’m surprised he wasn’t killed there and then.’

  ‘Well, the mzee did call him one first.’

  And then, one misty February morning, Raj’s father came to break the news to him. ‘Now, beta, I don’t want you to be too upset…’

  Pinto had been killed, shot at the gate of his house, riddled with bullets from those exact bushes Raj used to hide within, his nose irritated by the woody wild flowers.

  ‘Must have been desperate.’ He heard his father and uncle speaking in low tones later that day as he lay upstairs in his bed, trying to understand his grief. ‘To do it in broad daylight and right outside his house! In front of his daughter and on that busy street.’

  ‘Time to leave this place,’ Raj’s aunt had warned. ‘’I told you, they don’t want us here.’

  Raj had been devastated. He’d mourned as if he had lost a loved one, someone as close to him as his mother or sister, but somehow worse because, without Pinto, that budding dream of his lost direction. It wandered and tripped, became afraid of itself and hid tightly away under a horde of questions that would forever go unanswered.

  The picture of Pinto was framed and hung up on his bedroom wall and Raj tucked his dreams behind the glass so that they would always be close to him. Then he did what his father advised and moved on with his life, because it was silly to hang onto the dead and all the doubt that came with them.

  He met Pooja when he was nineteen, working as an accountant at the family’s fish shop and, over a shared bottle of coke, he told her the story of Pio Gama Pinto and of his aspirations and she fell in love with him and his eyes, which were as quick and bright as his words.

  Following the death of his uncle, Raj’s father sold the fish shop and started a small used furniture store where their main clientele were local Africans. It was during this time that Raj began to put into practice what little advice he had received from Pinto.

  Unlike his father, Raj was friendly with his African customers and employees, reprimanding the older man for calling them ‘thieves’, ‘lazy idiots’ and ‘monkeys.’

  ‘But they’re stealing from us,’ his father had protested. ‘You should know – you’re the one doing the books.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Raj had corrected him. ‘And yes, some of them are thieves but there are also Indian thieves – and big ones too. Stealing millions of shillings from our country… so what can you say about them?’

  But the full realization of his dreams remained constantly out of his reach. Raj often blamed it on the fact that he was running a business, had become a husband and a father and that these things occupied enormous spaces in his life, leaving room for little else. He also knew that he was partly responsible – that though his dreams were beautiful, they were also terrifying and he had been slightly frightened to catch up to them.

  So, early on in his son’s life, when Raj recognized something in Jai that was reminiscent of his own idealism, he took it upon himself to nurture the boy, to teach him the lessons he had learned from Pinto – to mold Jai’s rapidly adjusting mind and body into strong, hard shapes so that fear would never fit into him.

  Which was why, upon seeing Angela’s son approach Leena as she played marbles, Raj had immediately sent Jai out.

  ‘See that boy with your sister? I want you to help him with whatever he needs.’

  Now the street was empty and Jai was emerging from the veranda, kicking a small stone ahead of him. At sixteen, his father had been a clueless boy, but Jai carried within him a solid sense of conviction – a steel framework of principle that few men Raj knew possessed – and it made his chest puff out with pride.

  It was as if the boy had come to him at just the right time – when Raj was old enough that his dreams were beginning to change, break down and turn cruel, morphing into painful regrets.

  ‘He’s Angela’s son,’ Pooja informed her family once they were all seated at the table. She was hot and bothered, having had to lean over the stove for half an hour, deep-frying the pooris. Normally, Angela would have made them but Pooja had allowed her to go home early.

  She fanned out her loose tunic, blowing down the collar. ‘He was living in Eldoret with his grandmother but she passed away from a serious bout of malaria.’

  ‘I didn’t know Angela had a son.’ Leena pressed her nail down into the balloon-like poori. With a slight whistle it flattened into a yellow heap on her plate.

  ‘Your father and I knew about Michael – that’s his name. He’s around your age.’ Pooja turned to Jai. ‘He was going to school there but now he’ll be living with Angela so you’ll see him around here sometimes.’

  Pooja had made it clear to Angela that she would not be paying for the extra set of hands. She was the one doing Angela the favor – so that she wouldn’t have to leave her son at home during the school holidays while she came to work.

  ‘Do we have to be friends with him?’ Leena chewed down anxiously on her food, imagining all the cruel taunts she might receive if she should befriend this strange, light-stepping boy.

  Whilst debating how to answer, Pooja looked over at her husband. She had been worried about bringing the boy here, especially at this raging-hormone age and especially around her daughter. ‘You just never know with these kharias,’ she had told Raj, hush-hush in their bed the night Angela had informed them about Michael. ‘And yet here you are saying we must agree to let her bring him into our home because that is what Pinto would have done.’

  At the table that night, unable to keep the crossness from his voice, Raj told his daughter, ‘Of course you’ll be his friend.’

  Pooja interjected, ‘He’s coming here to work. Not to play.’

  ‘No matter what you decide, I want you to treat him with respect and kindness, is that understood?’ Raj addressed Leena but looked instead at his son. He put his napkin down. ‘Jai, come outside with me
while these two ladies clean up.’

  They left the table together, his daughter’s nasal whine following them out onto the street. ‘It’s not fair that Jai gets to go outside while I have to clear up the table.’ Stomping feet could be heard above her mother’s harsh reprimanding. ‘I hate being a girl.’

  The street outside was empty but Raj still led his son to the most secluded area on the compound – behind all the houses, where the communal water tank was situated. He settled on the brick ledge there, crossing one leg over the other knee and pulling a cigarette from his trouser pocket.

  ‘Sit down,’ he told his son as the air filled with the fast hiss of a matchstick lighting. The orange flame, captured in the round cup of his father’s palm, danced in flickers about his face and Jai immediately went to him. He tucked his hands beneath his thighs, zipping up his hooded sweatshirt right beneath his chin. He was used to the seriousness of his father’s tone, understood already what was coming next.

  ‘Your sister can do whatever she wants but you will become friends with that boy.’

  Jai scuffed his feet against the loose gravel. He dragged the heel of his sneaker slowly toward the ledge, opening up a valley of tiny, gray stones. He said through gritted teeth, ‘Okay.’

  Arguing with his father was impossible. Jai had recognized early on the burden that had been placed upon him but was now old enough to reach the conclusion that while having your own hopes could be thrilling, being forced to carry someone else’s was exhausting. And yet, he always found himself relenting, always agreeing.

  Raj exhaled – a dragon puff of smoke. ‘I knew you would understand. You’re a special boy. You’re going to do great things when you’re older.’

  ‘I wish you would stop telling me what I am.’ The words sneaked out. Perhaps it was the darkness, the fact that he could not make out the details of his father’s face so was unable to detect the gathering up of his features, the set lips and tight brow.

  ‘I’m reminding you because I know how easy it is to forget.’ Raj dropped the cigarette to the ground, let it smolder. ‘When I was younger, I asked a great man what it takes to be a hero. He told me that it wasn’t about being the bravest person – it was about being a good one. About sacrificing your happiness for the right thing.’ He searched the straight-edged nose and apple cheeks of his son. A mirror image of himself. ‘I couldn’t understand him then but now that I do, I want to teach you.’

  ‘I just want to be normal.’ There it was again, his feelings made bolder by the night.

  ‘But you aren’t normal, don’t you see? None of us are until we allow ourselves to be.’ Raj was facing his son fully now. ‘It is the greatest injustice you can do to yourself – to settle for ordinary.’

  Jai took his hand out from under his father’s and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. As always, the words his father spoke affected him in a way no one else’s did. Perhaps it was the weight of them; they carried a thrill, which despite his annoyance, always had a way of exciting him, pushing him into action, and he said, in the final spark of his father’s dying cigarette, ‘I’ll talk to Michael tomorrow.’

  It was after lunchtime the next day when Jai went out onto the veranda. There was a back door leading onto it from the kitchen – a congested space cut off from the rest of the street by a low iron fence. A clothes line swung across the width of it, the concrete floor permanently wet from drying garments. There was a narrow bench that ran along the perimeter, though no space existed upon it to sit. It was overrun by potted plants, ponytail palms, blooming white-flowered cacti and Leena’s favorite, a purple-tinged flower, puffed out like soft cotton. A touch-me-not, it shrunk and closed up at the slightest touch. Slowly, she placed the tip of her pinky along the slim, ridged leaf and allowed it to curl, drawing up its edges into a spiky barrier.

  ‘Why do you like to scare the prrant?’ Angela asked in her comforting Kikuyu accent, the absence of ‘l’ replaced by a heavy, rolling ‘r’ making everything sound like a shout, even the most loving murmur.

  ‘I want to know why it does that.’ Leena touched another leaf, giggling as it compressed and folded into itself.

  ‘I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s for protection. So they won’t get eaten by insects or other animals.’ Jai turned to Angela impatiently. ‘I’m looking for Michael.’

  ‘He stayed home today. He’s feeling tired after his journey and wanted to rest.’

  That morning, his father’s words having slept within him, Jai had risen full of childish excitement. He felt it deflate slightly now, curdle in disappointment. ‘When he does decide to come, please let me know.’

  Angela picked up a wet shirt and began scrubbing it hard, slap-slap, against her knuckles. She wondered whether that was a good idea. Two or three days of playing and they’ll be done with each other, she decided.

  ‘Okay.’ She waved them away, her arms buried in foam. ‘Go now and let me finish my work.’

  ‌

  12

  Eldoret. The town of hills – training grounds for Kipchoge Keino, the famous long-distance running champion who was also the hero of Michael’s childhood. A place of wholesale dukas and manufacturing companies such as Ken-Knit, Lochab Brothers and Raiplywoods, set up and developed by the oldest East-Indian families living in the Rift Valley Region. A city of few museums and too many nightclubs, with a vast night sky that hung low like a canopy, traversed by Ngai himself, the creator and giver of all things.

  Michael had never been close with his grandmother – had in fact lived in terror of the heavy-set, lumbering woman upon whose doorstep he had been dropped when he was three years old, after his mother had found some casual labor working for an Indian family in the capital city.

  ‘Nairobi is no place for a child to grow up,’ his grandmother had said to him when he began asking questions. ‘Drugs, sex, thieves – it’s a city where everything that can be stolen will be stolen, including yourself.’

  Known to most people as simply Madam, his grandmother made a living trading anything that her hands came upon. Potatoes, sukuma-wiki, maize, all of which she grew in the communal shamba running along the edges of her home, closing off the half-acre plot with a wire fence and keeping such close guard of it that no one dared steal a single cob or pull one leaf of the collard greens.

  She took Michael out to plow, dig, water and hoe as soon as he was old enough for proper hand-eye co-ordination. Chickens, a few short-haired cows, some goats; whether it was the gift of the gab or the ability to terrorize, his grandmother sold back to people the things they already had at a grossly inflated price and garnered a reputation as a cunning and ruthless businesswoman.

  As Michael grew up she began to accept books and magazines instead of money for her goods, but only those written in English. She had forced them upon him as his friends played outside on the street, saying, ‘Your father, mjinga, stupid man, thought he could win without knowing a single thing! You are going to learn their language, speak it properly, become as clever as they are – it’s the only way to send them back and return this country to the people it rightfully belongs to.’

  A gossiper, a maker of sordid stories, Madam went about systematically destroying the reputations of all those who crossed or angered her, or those she felt to be a threat. Michael heard her talking about his mother once, when he was supposed to be asleep but had instead crawled up behind the door of the bedroom they shared.

  She was sitting opposite another woman, Mama Itanya, and they were slowly sipping on Jack Daniels from small glass mugs. Michael had no idea how she had managed to get her hands on something so decadent, but he wasn’t surprised. His grandmother was as wily and devious as a magician and just as selfish with her tricks. He watched them swirl, suckle and gulp in the light of a quarter moon and devised a plan on how he would sneak some. Little did he know that two weeks later the old woman would be dead and he would be the sole inheritor of that half-full bottle of whiskey. He couldn’t have envisioned the night he
sat beside her bed and looked over her still body, finding it impossible that someone so fearsome could succumb to something as inconsequential as a mosquito. A peculiar sadness would pick away at him and, although he would be eager to see his mother again, he would also be reluctant to leave that town, those people, and the only memories he had.

  But that night he listened to her with growing rage, any insult against his mother feeling like a personal slight against himself.

  ‘I wouldi never work for anyone!’ she was burping, the drink making her louder than usual, her Kikuyu-laced English more difficult to understand.

  Mama Itanya had hushed her. ‘The boy will hear you.’

  Madam drank again, ignoring her companion. ‘I told his mother, you come andi work for me and we make good money together. We get there sirowry buti surery. None of thisi working for criminals. Ngai! Ten thousand shillings a month – how cani anyone live off that over there?’

  The day following her death, Michael had left Mama Itanya, who was also his grandmother’s second cousin, in charge of the house and shamba and had boarded the Eldoret Express at eight thirty in the morning. On the torn and rickety seat, pressed beside a student of Chepkoilel Campus, Michael had listened to her babble excitedly about her boyfriend in Nairobi.

  ‘City boys are different. So sophisticated,’ she had told him, describing the fancy, European-style restaurants, the shopping malls and hotels, the Phoenix Theater where one could go and watch a local play, and coffee shops – ‘Can you imagine sipping coffee for one whole hour? Absurd.’ Trying but failing to communicate fully the intangible energy of the capital, the dreams it infected you with so that, even if you wanted to leave, once you set foot in Nairobi you were changed forever and there was no going back.

  Still, Michael had no idea what to expect when he arrived in the congested city. He saw all manners of people – cheeky, African pedestrians; sour-mouthed Indian shop owners; mzungus in all their khaki glory, pink-faced and friendly, as if they had been plucked straight from a romance novel. He even spotted a Chinese man haggling at an electronics store and stopped to gape at the unusual sight. The sounds of the evening traffic mixed with gospel music from bus radios and people setting up shop wherever there was space on the bumpy, unpaved roadside – selling sweets, hot peanuts and magazines. Above his head ran lines of wire mannequins dressed up in the latest Western fashions.