The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

by M G Vassanji

  The driver blew his whistle, slowed down as we approached the deserted broken-down village, and with a big grin watched me jump down onto a mound of grass and rubble; then the train went along its way.

  The old couple had seen the train, waited for it as they sometimes did, and as I stood up, dusted myself and came around the old dilapidated station and down the ridge toward them, they stared at me in stupefaction. They were attired similarly in ragged shorts and shirt; Janice had on a straw hat and looked rather red. I told them who I was, and Mungai nodded his head slowly a couple of times with a look of what I assumed was recognition. He opened his mouth, but said nothing. I told the couple this was not an official visit. I had tired of city life and come to spend a few days in the quiet of their surroundings, if they did not mind.

  They stared a moment longer at me, then at the duffel bag in my hand.

  Come along then, said Janice and led the way.

  We would sit outside at night by the fire, often in silence; the couple would later retire to the inner room and I would stay outside, throwing dried branches into the fire, watching the moon go down behind the trees. The stars and planets shone brilliantly, tracing, I imagined, their wide elliptic orbits in the firmament, itself rotating against the earth. This equilibrium, this rhythm, was called the music of the spheres, I remembered being taught, and was the inspiration behind all the music in the world, and a reflection of the cycles of our lives. Did I perceive cycles in my own life? Yes, in the end of childhood and the onset of the middle years, the birth of children and the aging of parents. Many years later I would look at this same firmament from another part of the world, on cool, clear nights…and feel connected to this place. The only disturbance in the night now was the sound of wild dogs fighting over scraps at the dump, a safe distance of a few hundred yards away. I slept on a child’s broken-down cot in the veranda, which was in front of the house and enclosed but three-quarters of the way up. I was afraid my first few nights there; as I closed my eyes I comforted myself with the thought that all the animals in the forest were doing the same, except for the wild dogs and the owls. I was woken up every morning by the shrill cry of a kite. And as I peered out at the cool blue slice of morning sky visible outside from where I lay on the cot, I could just discern the pale, white, and now fading sparkles of the stars. There would be the smell of wood burning; the light thump of footsteps on the earth somewhere; the call of the rooster.

  I went out hunting with Mungai, a spear in my hand, but the weapon was for form and only rudimentary protection, I did not know how to use it. We came away with a small deer once and a rabbit another time. The former was roasted and the latter went into a stew. But our main diet was ugali or rice, with beans or spinach.

  One balmy afternoon after a rainfall, while the three of us were playing cards on the veranda, there came loud trumpeting from behind the house, not far away, and the sound as if of a hundred warriors stamping their feet. Janice looked up impatiently and said, Oh those ruddy tembos again. We all raced to the back of the house.

  It seemed that people in a nearby village had cleared some of the woods in their vicinity to make space for a football field and rally ground. In the process, they had encroached upon the route of an elephant herd. The elephants in their confusion had changed their route several times, sometimes stomping through cultivation. The grey beasts were waiting in a group at the far end of the couple’s plot, as if conferring before beginning their mischief, and the three of us wailed like banshees, beat on ancient four-gallon tin cans and aluminum sufuriyas in order to distract or dissuade them, but to no avail. Slowly they traipsed into the cornfield, covering its entire area, and trumpeting joyfully—so it seemed—they systematically and thoroughly uprooted it, before ambling their slow deliberate way to find their lost route.

  You big devils, muttered Janice tearfully after them, you should try and work for your dinner sometimes.

  The next few days we spent repairing the damage done by the tembos.

  Every afternoon I went to the graves in the backyard and watered the wildflowers growing there.

  This is Janice’s story, which she told me one day:

  One October night after attending a meeting in the local school to plan the town’s Christmas festivities, she had gone for drinks to the home of some friends, a couple of miles away. Her husband John and their two sons were at home and asleep. The year was 1950 and she was forty years old. The two boys were eight and ten. When she returned she was met by three of the servants who were standing outside the house; they looked frightened, one of them began weeping. Fretfully they took her to the chillingly quiet aftermath of a bloodbath in her home. It looked like a setting in a tragic drama before the heroine arrives on the scene and tears out her hair. Robbers had attacked and killed, and everything of value had been taken from the house. She did not know if any of the servants had been involved in the crime, she did not care. There was nothing to go back for to England, and she simply stayed where her husband and her children were buried. This was where she too desired to be buried.

  She confessed to the indescribable grief which caused her to be admitted to the Nakuru European Hospital. There were pressures on her to return to England thereafter, more so after the abandonment of the area by the other Europeans during the Mau Mau period, and the closing of the station. She stayed on, a ghost in the house, which slowly began to come apart around her. One day Mungai, a former clerk at the station who had kindly helped her cope with daily routines, brought his things and moved in with her. He too was alone and far from home.

  I watched them together, he sitting on the ground like me, she on a three-legged low stool. There was a quiet, gentle intimacy between them, and also a deep difference they did not pretend to bridge. For example, she would apply fork and knife to pick at a sizeable bone, even though her prematurely wrinkled skin, the frazzled, curly hair, and the gnarled hands hardly bespoke daintiness.

  What brings you here, they asked. I was betrayed by my father, I said cynically at first. More seriously, I told them I had been deeply impressed by this place when I first saw it. It drew me perhaps because of the tragedy of the murdered children, which touched me in a way I could not consistently explain. It spoke to something deep inside me.

  Once a week, on Saturday, the train would pass, going north to Solai and the next afternoon it would return on its way back to Nakuru.

  One day, a month after my arrival in Jamieson, Dilip walked up to the backyard where we were sitting after our midday meal. He had come by car, with a companion, through a back route. It was not hard to find me. An inquiry in Nakuru had revealed that I had bagged a ride on the Solai train. Furthermore I had already spoken to him more than once about this mysteriously affecting place.

  I said my goodbyes to Janice and Mungai, full of foreboding that one day I was sure to be back.

  When I reached home the next day, my wife greeted me with a smile and a cup of tea; my box of memorabilia was on my bed, with the missing picture of Annie and me back inside it.

  Thus Shobha declared her truce with me, having been scared witless by the prospect that she had become an abandoned wife or even a widow. Still, she had to tell me, as the chappatis kept coming on my vegetarian plate from the kitchen, where the cook baked them, I smell meat on you—I hope you will not mind if I keep my distance from you for a few days. My children, Ami and Sita, hovered around me all the time and I was moved by their attention to me, their dependence on my own attention and my love. I had never thought of them as insecure or needy; so orderly had been their lives and so complete a control had Shobha on their existence, with the aid of two efficient nannies and an expensive nursery school, that I had sometimes felt myself superfluous to their lives. But it seemed that the uncertainty and acrimony at home after my dismissal by Nderi, followed by my sudden mysterious exit about which their mother had no answer but an anxious look, had considerably unsettled them. They had been unhappy.

  In the spirit of Shobha’s truce
, and to bring the former stability back to my home, and because there were no other options, I agreed to join my in-laws in business. The terms were generous and a new episode in my life began.

  The photos are old and brittle, six by four inches; they are yellow and easily curl up; the edges are serrated in the fashion of their time. Their contents are everything I expected. There are four of them, one for each victim. In the first one, Mr. Bruce lies on the ground, where he was shot; one knee is raised. There is a black stain next to him that is most likely blood; it disappears under a sofa. The next picture is of a boy’s headless body; he is wearing shorts and shirt, is partly on his side on the floor. There are machete marks on the calves, and perhaps a leg is broken at the shin. The third picture. A girl in her bed, lying sideways, the head separated by an inch from the neck. Both arms raised. The fourth one shows Mrs. Bruce on the kitchen floor, lying face down in a pool of blood; like her husband she had been shot. The children’s gutted teddy bear lies on its back in her blood.

  They burn reluctantly like old bones, these photos, and they hurt in their burning. They hurt not only at the thought of what happened to those children but also for what remains in me, the stain I cannot erase. I don’t have a suitable prayer to utter, at this point, except to murmur, May you be resting in peace, wherever you are, dear friends, I wish you had lived and we could have known each other more—I will always remember you.

  With tongs I pick up the ashes from the grill on the porch and put them in a plastic bag; then I walk in the dark to the lake and drop the ashes into the water. I look out across the lake and imagine Deepa there.

  I have burnt those pictures, Deepa, I tell her over the phone. Just as Njoroge told me to, when he gave them to me. I gave them a cremation and put the ashes into the lake.

  She waits a moment, then says, Good. I’m glad you did that, Bhaiya.

  I know she has tears in her eyes; tears for me.

  Seema walks in a little later and I tell her I’ve given the photos a cremation. Her eyes light up and she comes and gives me a tight hug, as if in condolence. Good for you, she says. It’s the closest we’ve come.

  She was about to speak as she came in, I realize, before I interrupted her. Now she tells me, There’s news on CNN, about Kenya. Joseph called and he’s very disturbed.

  According to the news, there’s been a massacre in Nakuru. A Kikuyu MP has called it genocide and ethnic cleansing, adding, We shall fight with weapons, if necessary.

  And on the Internet, the MuKenya group, the Sons of Mau Mau, have declared war on their enemies who are unnamed but could be the government and its supporters in the Rift Valley. No more machetes! says a rallying cry. We have guns! Come to Kenya and fight!

  TWENTY-EIGHT.

  We had spoken about it, occasionally, Sophia and I. She might be posted on another route for a long time and not be able to come to Nairobi; she might meet her ideal man to settle down with somewhere; my wife might give me an ultimatum. Sooner or later our relationship would come to an end, and che sera sera.

  One morning Rose Waiyaki called me at home and said that a letter had arrived for me at Paul Nderi’s office; there was no sender’s name or address on the envelope, but the stamp said South West Africa. I think it is from that woman who sends you postcards from abroad, Rose ventured confidingly.

  She was right. Caro Vittorio, Sophia wrote, I am sure you will understand. I have married a businessman from South West Africa whom I met on a flight to Johannesburg…Ciao baby and remember me sometimes.

  As I finished reading the letter, in a coffeehouse downtown, I began to realize just how attached I had grown to my petite Italian mistress, my own private spark of life and joy in an otherwise apathetic existence.

  Ciao Sophia, I wish we had burned our flame a little brighter and longer; only I lacked that passion to feed it, as you well knew and understood.

  The mouse blows kisses as it nibbles away, was the Javeris’ modus operandi. You ate and let others eat, was the more widely quoted adage of the day, to which all our city’s business people subscribed. Bribes were extorted, offered, paid until they became casual as handshakes. My brother-in-law Chand explained the situation this way, with his businessman’s cynical humour and folksy wisdom: Bribes were a form of taxation; before the Europeans arrived, the Africans collected a tax called hongo which you paid if you passed through their area. Missionaries and explorers had all paid hongo in the past, having learned from the Swahili, Ukiwa na udhia, penyeza rupia: when in trouble, offer a dollar. A bribe today was simply hongo tax, payment for services rendered, or for permission to pass on unobstructed to the next stage of your enterprise. Since the government paid so little to its employees, they simply collected their own hongo, calling it “tea money.” In most of the countries of the world, he claimed, people were used to paying this surcharge.

  I had been appointed the Javeris’ facilitator; I could open doors for them that would otherwise remain shut. My influence reached far, for I had been chosen: I had recourse to the fount of all power in the country, I had the ears of the Old Man. For with his abrupt and hurtful dismissal of me had come also a partial benediction, and an offer of lasting friendship.

  Consider.

  A panic-stricken and terrified Dilip came to my office one Monday morning and said, My head is on the block, Vic. Save me. The past Friday he had received a terse phone call, telling him he was required for a private conference with Mother Dottie in Nyeri, to hear a business proposition. Mother Dottie was like the legendary predator python who, by simply drawing in her evil breath, could suck you in from afar and ingest you within her coils. Mother Dottie’s awesome power derived from the fact that she was a favourite of the Old Man; she had perhaps been his mistress in the past. She struck ruthlessly and her victims were all of the vulnerable sort. Now the evil summons had arrived for Dilip. He flew straight to Nyeri the next day, dread in his heart, and was met and driven to Mother Dottie’s residence. It had been a country club in British times and included a golf course and tennis courts. Mother Dottie, tall and beautiful, dressed that day in a slit Malay-style dress, had a heavy accent in English. She was a graceful hostess, meeting Dilip in person at the driveway, offering him coffee, and then leaving him in the library with her two male advisors to discuss business. In the midst of the discussions, she sent over a club-style lunch, with beer, more coffee and cheese. What impressed Dilip about the library were two ceiling-high elephant tusks on either side of the antique desk, and bookends and numerous other knick-knacks of carved ivory. Mother Dottie was known as the principal dealer in the country’s illegal ivory trade.

  There was not much for Dilip to say to the two henchmen, one of whom was a lawyer. They laid before Dilip Mermaid Chemicals’ annual reports and particulars of business on file with the national bank and the tax office. They laid before him information regarding his family, who had bribed officials on several occasions, and one of whom (Mahesh Uncle) had collaborated with communist enemies of the state. They laid before him an agreement he should sign, handing over Mermaid Chemicals to Mother Dottie for a nominal sum.

  This extortionist procedure was well known in Nairobi and dubbed “sign on the Dottie line.”

  Dilip immediately refused; then, extremely frightened by the chill that met his answer, he said he would think about the matter. On his way out he saw Mother Dottie from a distance, in the company of a stocky Anglican priest. She waved like a queen, and Dilip bowed in reply and departed almost at a trot.

  What can she do? he asked.

  Plenty, I answered. Your factories could be closed for any number of reasons.

  He stared at me.

  Or it could be worse, I added, you can never tell.

  Dilip was sitting on a gold mine that was the envy of many. He had licences for beauty products, pain killers, and sleeping tablets; he manufactured antibiotics, which people in Nairobi had acquired a habit of prescribing for themselves. He was expanding into garden and agricultural products. He wanted to h
ang on to his chemical empire, not sell it at a tenth its value.

  Sam Karimi admitted me into the Old Man’s office. The President and I greeted each other in our manner and I sat across from his desk and told him my shida, what troubled me. I narrated at length the story of Dilip and Mermaid Chemicals, up to the events of the previous weekend, which had brought me here. While I spoke, he would rub the backs of his hands as if they itched; the jewelled ring he usually wore on his left hand was removed and placed on the desk before him. Arthritis often bothered him. Now and then he would dart a glance in my direction or grunt to acknowledge what I had said.

  Ahh! he said finally, when I was finished, and shook his head sympathetically. Then softly, indulgently, he went on, Sio nzuri. This is not good at all. They actually told him to sell them his business, and at a tenth of its value? How greedy people get in our land…

  I suppressed a smile. It was not as if he was unaware of Mother Dottie’s doings. It was just her bad luck that Dilip was my brother-in-law.

  He picked up his phone and asked for a line. When he was connected, he spoke to Julius, the lawyer-henchman of Mother Dottie.

  Julius, wewe, said Mzee. This, this Mermaid Chemicals…she is interested, but why?…And you have advised her so?…Huna adabu. You have no shame. They are an asset to our country; they export to Uganda, to Tanzania, to Ethiopia. Now what do you have to go and do your ushenzi for and harass them? Call this Muhindi—this Dilip—you tell him you are sorry, it was a mistake. Yes, a mistake. Sasa hivi, mpigie simu, mwambie ni kosa lako tu.