On the way home the expedition had passed through many hardships and adventures. A band of Embu warriors had laid an ambush, but the caution and quick sight of Waseru and his brother Ngarariga had detected the trap in time. They had taken a different route through the forest and avoided the enemy spearmen. They had slept in the open and hyenas and leopards had prowled around their fires; only the courage and wakefulness of Waseru and Ngarariga had saved the goats, and perhaps the women, from the jaws of savage beasts. They had run short of food and dared not approach hostile villages to renew supplies; only the will-power and tirelessness of Waseru and Ngarariga had kept the column from breaking up, and the women from being lost among the Embu. They had marched on through rain and cold, heat and hunger, driving the goats always ahead; and now at last Waseru had brought them back unscathed, with wealth to swell their fathers’ flocks.
“All around me I see the faces of my kinsfolk,” Waseru concluded, “and I ask you—have we done well? Have we brought goats to enrich our clan? Have we returned your daughters to you in safety, you fathers whose daughters carried millet to Meru ? Are you satisfied with all that we have done ?”
A great shout went up from the audience as the tale came to an end; a shout of praise. The sound ran through Waseru’s body like a draught of warm beer. This was indeed an adequate return for all the fears and hardships of his venture. He lifted his hand to acknowledge the applause. His father’s wives burst into the shrill rippling trills of delight and admiration that women made when they wished to praise a man. Other women joined in, until it seemed as if a great concourse of birds was singing in mass exaltation, or as if all the he-goats in Kikuyu were ringing their bells on a distant hill-top. The women started to dance in a circle, waving in the air gourds of gruel and branches hastily plucked from a mukenya bush nearby, and from time to time pouring some of the gruel over their bare, shining heads to express their uncontrollable delight.
“God has been good,” Mahenia said to his son, spitting on his left breast in blessing. “No doubt it was Irumu’s charm that protected you from the ambush set by the Embu, and from the rhinos on the path. You should present Irumu with a fattened he-goat, for had it not been for his magic, you would certainly have been killed.”
“I will do so, father,” Waseru agreed, “for indeed Irumu’s magic was very great.”
2
The division of the goats was a long and complicated business. It had been arranged that the fathers of the girls who went to carry millet should share one-third of the total, the owners of the millet another third, and that Waseru, Ngarariga and two other young men who had gone with the party should divide up the remainder. But adjustments had to be made because the girl Ambui, who could not be divided, was part of the spoils; and much discussion took place before the matter could be fairly settled. In the end Waseru received the full rights of a father, but surrendered some of his goats. In a few seasons, however, she would be marriageable, and worth thirty goats and several fat rams—property which he could use, when the time came, to secure a wife for his son Muthengi.
Now that he had a little flock, Wanjeri gave him no peace.
“Since you are an owner of goats, why do you not give me skins for new clothing?” she asked. “Are you not ashamed to let me be seen indecently dressed, like the wife of a man who must beg land?”
“The talk of women is like the rattle of dried beans in an empty gourd,” Waseru retorted. “No doubt you expect me to kill my few young female goats in order to provide you with dresses. In that way I should soon become as rich as Wangombe, who has ten wives.”
“Yet the skin of this goat belongs already to Irumu and I must go clad in holes,” Wanjeri complained as she toiled up the steep hillside to her shamba, a heavy load of green banana branches on her stooping back. Her husband walked ahead, driving a young male goat picked for the sacrifice that must be performed before the homestead could be purified of thahu, and Wanjeri’s bed fit to sleep in. “No doubt the wives of Irumu are clothed in as many skins as the banana leaves covering an unbaked clay pot that is drying. Am I then to wait until the goats from Meru grow thin with age before I have a new dress ?”
Waseru knew that her complaints, although irritating, were not unjust. Her ochre-stained skins were worn as thin as leaves and in places they were torn and ragged.
“The beans are already swelling in their pods,” he remarked. As he spoke they reached the entrance to his little compound. Weeds had grown up to the fence and choked the gateway. It was blocked with branches of the murembu shrub in whose leaves resided the power to repel hyenas. “ You must harvest them soon. When they are threshed you may take two sacks to Karatina; perhaps I will exchange them there for skins; that is, if skins are not too expensive.”
Wanjeri grunted, and slid the bananas off her back. The leather thong had bitten a deep groove into the skin of her flat, shining forehead. Ambui, the Meru girl, trudged behind, the baby swaying in a sling on her back. She was silent and timid, shy as a young antelope, but she treated her new parents with proper respect.
Wanjeri pulled aside the hut’s wicker-plaited door and kindled a fire. The logs, stacked on a wooden platform supported by four poles above the hearth-stones, were dry, and soon thick swirls of smoke were pushing upwards through the thatch. All at once the roof became alive with rustlings and the busy scurrying of invisible feet. The rats, who had found in this dark, dry dwelling an ideal refuge, were deeply offended at being thus disturbed.
“All day I work in the shamba to fill the granary,” Wanjeri exclaimed, her voice shrill with complaint, “and all night the rats work as hard to empty it. Surely the bodies of these animals must be possessed by spirits, for they are very small, and yet they eat as if they were giants.”
And, indeed, when she opened the granary she saw that rats had devoured completely her small remaining store of yams and sorghum. Now the family would have little to eat but bananas until a new harvest was in.
3
The maize, from which so much had been expected, was a failure. The sharp teeth of antelopes had nipped its tender shoots and wild pigs, destructive as falling boulders, had torn up the shamba. The surviving plants had grown to a great height, taller than a man; but then the cold, sunless weather had come and the grain had failed to ripen. Waseru shook his head sadly when he saw the wizened cobs, half suspecting magic; but he resolved to try again in the millet rains, when there would be more sun at the time of harvest. But the bean crop was heavy, and now that Wanjeri had the adopted Meru girl to help her, the harvest was quickly gathered. The beans, of three different sizes and colours—black, red, and white—were threshed with sticks on a stiff ox-hide in the compound, and then set out to dry. They made slow progress because of cold mornings when the sky was stained the sombre black of iron-sand, and all colour fled from a land without shadows. But after the turn of the noon the black heavy clouds began to crack like a worn-out calabash, to let streams of warm sunlight through; and then one day a clear blue morning dawned. The sun came up again in splendour over the mountain’s shaggy shoulder like a well-greased warrior, gleaming with red ochre, striding out to war.
For. several seasons Waseru had put off the operation of piercing his sons’ ears because, before it could be performed, the permission of his wife’s eldest brother had, by custom, to be given. In the leisure that followed the bean harvest he decided that the event could be no longer postponed. His eldest brother-in-law, Karue, was liked by none; and, worse still, ugly rumours of sorcery were abroad. Waseru feared that he would demand an unfairly heavy payment of goats before he gave his consent. Such payments were generally looked on as goodwill presents from the father’s clan to the mother’s, but Karue would no doubt regard the goats as a debt to be paid to the last hair of the last goat’s tail.
Unpleasant as it was, however, the situation had to be faced. Waseru did not dare to go himself, for he still owed Ndolia nine goats and several brews of beer, and he was afraid he would be poisoned; but N
garariga agreed to carry through the negotiations. He drove over a good female goat and a partially fattened ram and returned with a demand for three more goats and another ram. Waseru was so angry that he vowed never to send another goat; but in a few days he had to send Ngarariga back with two more. He dared not jeopardise his sons’ safety, and the ear-piercing could not be further postponed. Then, at last, Karue sent a grudging permission, and a discourteous reminder of the rest of the debt.
Matu tried not to cry out when a sharpened stick was thrust through the flesh of his ear-lobe, and then of the upper cartilage, and twisted about until the hole was big enough to take a small plug of wood. But he could not suppress a whimper, and his father rebuked him with looks of shame. His brother’s face remained calm as a cloud and gave no sign that he had even felt the pain.
4
In these days Muthengi lived a life of freedom and yet of discontent. Early in the morning he would disappear for the day. Sometimes he would return late at night for the evening meal and sometimes he would not come home at all, but would sleep in the huts of his companions. There were days when he herded his father’s goats conscientiously, guarding them from hyenas and pulling down tendrils of a tall creeper with red, trumpet-shaped flowers which they particularly favoured. There were other days when, the goats forgotten, he would roam the ridges with a band of other boys and do no work at all, but shout jests and boasts to girls working in the fields, or hold banana feasts in the bush, or badger the mothers of his companions for food.
He paid little attention to anything his own mother said. As soon as the beans were harvested she was able to dig clay—to have done so while a crop was in the ground would have brought a curse upon the harvest—and to make cooking-pots. She mixed the clay with water in a hollowed tree-trunk, moulded the fat-bellied pots with her hand, dried them under banana leaves in the shade, and finally set them to bake around a slow fire. When they were hardened she loaded them on to her back and set off on a three-day journey to Ndia and back, for there the best market lay. She asked Muthengi to go with her to help carry pots, but he refused scornfully and did not conceal his contempt when Matu agreed to go. To do girls’ work, and without protest, was the sign of a weakling and a fool. What young warrior would weigh down with burdens a back that should be erect and muscled only for the throwing of spears ?
Although Muthengi taunted his brother, Matu’s grave, pinched face showed no expression, and he did not reply. But in the evening, while the family sat around the fire waiting for the food to cook, it was Matu who shamed his elder brother, while Muthengi sat sulkily by the wall, ready to avenge the first sign of contempt. Waseru had a fondness for riddles, of which there were a great many, and all with answers that were well known. He liked to test his sons’ memories and the quickness of their minds. When a lull came in the conversation he said:
“I saw an eagle standing on three trees.”
In the silence that followed Matu’s small voice cried:
“The cooking-pot!”
Waseru nodded his approval, and said again:
“My field is large, but only one plant grows there.”
Again Matu’s excited voice said:
‘The sun !”
“Is your tongue silent, Muthengi, like that of a giraffe?” Waseru asked. “Here is a riddle for you: My son stands amid spears, but is not harmed.”
Although his father had given him the clue, Muthengi could not recall the answer. He scowled from the shadows in sullen silence. Matu’s usual gravity crumbled; he sniggered, and whispered to a white kid held in his arms :
“The tongue !”
5
After harvest came the season of dances. Every evening young men with rattles on their legs and serval-cat skins dangling over their buttocks sang their way to the appointed spot, their faces and chests white with lime. They spent many hours before the dance arranging their plaited hair in the smartest possible way and decorating it with white feathers. But the heads of the girls were shaven; to spend overmuch time decorating their persons would have been both immodest and unduly frivolous. Far into the night the rhythmic voices of the dancers floated down sleeping valleys and over silent ridges that lay like the pale, still shoulders of giants bent in obeisance before the luminous beauty of the moon.
Muthengi longed with all his spirit to join these dances, but they were not for boys. Several times he crept up to the level, grassy field where they were held and gazed entranced at the leaping figures of the warriors, at the tempestuous swirling of Colobus tails and blackpocked serval pelts, and at the tongues of firelight flickering like golden lightning over glossy skins. But when he reached the circle’s edge, sucked in by the rhythm of the dance, one of the njamas * in charge made a quick dash towards him waving a bundle of burning sticks and shouting abuse, and Muthengi fled in shame and fright.
There were dances, however, for the uncircumcised, boys and girls alike. When the moon was half grown a decision was reached among the boys to fetch lime with which to paint their bodies for the dance Kibaata. They carried with them small bows and arrows, sharpened sticks for spears, and shields made from the bark of a tree; and as they marched they chanted a song in imitation of the warriors. In each boy’s mind the lumps of lime were cattle, and the pit from which they dug it an army of Masai.
Long before darkness fell on the following evening they were ready. Lime coated their legs beneath the knee and a white pattern decorated cheeks, backs and arms. Over their buttocks dangled skins neatly sewn with cowrie shells, and over their fuzzy heads was passed a thong into which the long wingfeathers of guinea-fowl and cranes were fastened. Several of the boys had small iron rattles tied to their legs below the knee. Envy stabbed Muthengi like spear-thrusts when he saw these rattles, for all the world like those on a warrior’s leg, and his mind returned continually to the problem of how he could get some for his own adornment.
6
At sunset the dancers, lads and girls together, gathered on an even, springy stretch of turf, their whitened faces grotesque in the last golden rays of the sun. When it had sunk and the first pale star hovered like a silver humming-bird in the east, the dance began. The children formed a ring, arms on shoulders, and began to rotate very slowly around the leader of the chorus, who stood alone in the centre.
Muthengi was the nucleus of the ring. He began his song slowly, swaying gently on his feet. At sudden intervals he jumped high into the air with heels close together, jerking his head violently back and forth on a rigid neck. A full-throated chorus took up the last line of each verse and chanted it over and over again to a quickening tempo. Soon the circle was rotating swiftly and boys and girls were stamping vigorously with the rhythm of the beat. Muthengi sprang higher and higher as he chanted, and as the speed quickened he seemed to return to earth more and more often opposite his adopted sister Ambui, who had slipped off from the forest shamba to attend the dance.
Ambui was maturing quickly, and Muthengi often found his eyes upon her. With her long-stemmed neck and smooth, sloping forehead she had grown into a girl of beauty. Ample food had filled her spidery limbs and rounded out her oncehollow belly. With plumpness had come a new independence which annoyed Wanjeri, but added to her charms.
When Muthengi grew tired of leading the chorus he yielded to another and joined the circle next to Ambui. Her shoulder was warm and slippery to his touch, and he felt his blood tingle as he watched her young breasts thrown up and down by the vigour of her movements like leaping fishes in a smooth, dark pool. Her body was filled with rhythm and her throat with song; she quivered like cane-stalks in the wind, and the rippling trills of applause for the singers burst from her throat like foam racing down a waterfall.
Hitherto he had thought of her only as a sister, one who helped his mother to cook food, bring firewood, and sweep the hut; now his body felt drawn towards her as the tongue of a thirsty man is drawn towards a spring. He knew, at the same time, that such thoughts were evil, perhaps sent to him by sorcerers, be
cause she was his sister and the crime of incest a serious one. It would be possible, theoretically at least, for her to undergo a ceremony making her the daughter of a tree, so leaving her free to marry into his clan; but the time for thoughts of marriage was not yet. In any case it was highly unlikely that Waseru would agree. Muthengi tried to think only of the dance, and leapt again into the centre to improvise more verses of the song.
After the dance was over, half-way through the night, Muthengi and Ambui returned to Mahenia’s along paths winding through the shambas, skirting stockades of silent slumbering homesteads and whispering clumps of trees. In the distance the deep, melodious voices of the young warriors echoed the rhythm that still pounded in Muthengi’s head. His blood was hot and his breath came quickly, for he knew that he had danced well and that girls would be speaking of his prowess as they sauntered home.
Red Strangers Page 10