Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  That, at least, was the story, listened to with misgivings mixed with scepticism. It was hard to believe that any individual could possess so powerful a magic as to influence rain, which was sent or withheld according to the will of God.

  3

  THE matter was soon forgotten in distress over a new calamity which swept the land—a disaster even greater than the drought.

  It started when one of the young men who had visited Karuri’s fell sick. In a few days his body was covered with running pimples, and the stench of evil arose from it. At first he rolled on the floor of his hut, maddened by irritation and then by pain, for the pimples grew into rotting sores. A mundu-mugu was sent for; but although he sacrificed a goat and rubbed cow-dung into the sores, before nightfall the man was dead.

  Within a few days the pestilence had spread to several homesteads round about. In one, four small children took sick and died within as many days. All had the same symptoms: fever, an outbreak of pimples exuding an evil-smelling pus; delirium; and death.

  Alarm spread quickly, and every mundu-mugu was besieged for charms. People awoke with terror in their hearts, searching in themselves for the first signs of the deadly fever. Old men recalled a similar outbreak in their youth, when half the people had been destroyed; its name was mothuro, the all-finishing disease. Only one cause could be ascribed to a misfortune of such magnitude: the anger of God. And the cause of divine wrath was not far to seek. Old men of the fourth and most venerable grade, who were at once consulted, had no doubts: it was the continued presence in the country of a stranger of unclean habits and evil intentions towards the Kikuyu people.

  The old men recalled also details of a method used before to cleanse the country from disease. Njamas were despatched to all the homesteads in the district carrying orders that every man, woman and child was to catch one fly and bring it in his hand to a central place near Karatina market. Next morning people streamed towards the meeting-place from every ridge and valley, like red ants on the march before rain. They were gaunt and bony with long hunger and many dragged their legs painfully, stopping every few yards to gain breath. Each person held out a clenched fist, and in it buzzed a captive fly. They gathered in a great ring around Irumu, who awaited them under a sacred fig-tree with eight chosen elders and a boy holding a young brown ewe.

  Irumu slit open the ewe’s belly, pegged back the flaps of skin, and rubbed several medicines into a hole made in the stomach. At his signal the circle around him broke and the people filed past one by one, each person pausing to thrust his fly into the ewe’s belly.

  When the stomach was stuffed with all the living flies the flaps of skin were replaced and Irumu sewed them together with twine. The ewe was hoisted on to a young man’s shoulders and the procession set off along a path leading towards Karuri’s, in the direction from which the pestilence had come, until it reached a spring that bubbled up from under a moss-coated rock on the side of a hill. A deep hole was dug above it and there the young ewe, now a mere barrel of flies, was buried. In this way the pestilence, driven by magic into the bodies of flies, was trapped in the belly of the ewe and buried deep beneath the spring, under the sources of life which flowed on above.

  4

  IT soon became clear that some mistake in a detail of the ceremony had been made. The pestilence spread, destroying youths and maidens as the knife of the harvester cuts ripe millet, carrying off babies and children and with them the wealth and hopes of their clans. Everywhere tortured bodies pullulated and stank with running sores, and groans of pain and desperation arose from dark huts. Hyenas slunk about in the open by day, their ugly jaws grinning loosely, nor did they wait for life’s extinction to begin their meal; the air was flecked with bald-necked, fattening vultures and heavy with the sickly stench of putrefaction. People scarcely dared to venture off the path, for corpses rotted in every stretch of bush. Men feared their wives and boys their fathers, lest pimples should sprout like buds of death on the bodies of those who shared their beds and meals; they feared to sleep and to awake, lest the pestilence should strike them; above all they feared the fingers of death brushing against their faces, like bats’ wings invisible in the blackness of a clouded night.

  A few recovered, although the marks of the disease never left their faces. Irumu called these fortunate ones together and told them that a charm could be made to bring protection to others, but he needed, as one of its ingredients, the ground-up pimples of a recovered man. They were asked if they would agree to give part of their bodies to Irumu, to be used for the benefit of their clansmen and friends. When their consent had been obtained Irumu scraped off the withered pustules, mixed them with certain medicines, and called those who had not yet been attacked. He cut their arms with a knife so that a little blood flowed, rubbed in some of the mixture, and marked them with ochre and lime. A few of those who were given this magic did not escape, but many were protected and lived safely through the months of plague.

  Waseru gave strict orders that none of his household was to venture out of the forest until the pestilence had passed.

  “If a man eats with one who is thahu,” he said, “he becomes unclean. So, too, with this pestilence; if I eat with a man into whose homestead it has come, I am in danger. Therefore no one must leave these shambas or eat from another’s pot, and perhaps then we shall escape the pestilence, for we are well protected by charms.”

  Waseru, it proved, was right. For three months the members of his household did not leave the forest, nor did they allow anyone to pass through their own gate. Tobacco ran out, but Waseru went without snuff; beer-drinks, games of giuthi and meetings of the council were ignored. All stayed at home and cultivated the shambas, and not one of them did the pestilence attack.

  It vanished as it had come, without warning or cause. A month went by without a new case, and hope strengthened that God had relented at last. Then, a little before the bean rains were due, the long drought broke in a violent cloudburst and they knew for certain that God’s anger was done. For three months it rained heavily, almost every day. As swiftly as a chameleon the country turned from brown to green. Weeds sprang up in the shambas, the dusty bush was washed clean, leaves stood up again upon the branches like the hairs on a wild pig’s back. The throats of birds quivered with song; frogs croaked in the swamps, and women sang as they carried digging-knives and the little seed they had saved to the shambas.

  About this time it was heard that the sorcerer had left Kaheri’s, and the elders were convinced that it was he, with his mysterious charms, who had brought the drought and then the pestilence upon them. Only Irumu scouted this idea.

  “No man is strong enough to bring about such things,” he said. “Do I not know the secrets of all the magic that has been handed down to us by our ancestors? There is no charm to make the clouds shed their moisture, nor to slay with pestilence; these things are the affairs of God. For to God the wiliest sorcerer is like a man so foolish he will slaughter his young she-goat; the clouds are his cattle, that are driven out to pasture at his will; and pestilence is the poison that he keeps secretly within his stoppered gourd.”

  The other elders agreed, but added : “It was the presence of this stranger in our country that angered God, and he sent these disasters upon us because he was displeased.”

  5

  AFTER the next harvest there was talk of another stranger, belonging to the same tribe as Kaheri’s eater-of-njahé, who had come to live at a place called Tetu, by the foot of Nyeri hill. It was said that his face appeared to have been coloured by red ochre, yet it was not so painted; and that he had companions with him who were digging a deep ditch. What the purpose of this ditch might be none could tell.

  A prophecy made in the rule of the last generation was recalled : that men with bells in their ears—that was, seemingly deaf, since they would understand nothing of ordinary speech —would come walking like the small frog kiangere, whose skin was a pale ochrish tinge. No doubt about it, the elders said; the prophecy of th
e old mundu-mugu had been fulfilled.

  Then news came that Wyaki’s warriors, to the south-east, had attempted to drive these strangers away but had been crushed by the magic of killing at a distance with fire. Wyaki himsel had been captured and taken away to the Wakamba’s country, where he had disappeared.

  Muthengi, now at last elected the leader of warriors as Irumu had foretold, was inclined to treat the matter lightly.

  “These Wathukumu have often come before, my father,” he said to Irumu. His wife was pregnant, and he had taken a brew of beer to his father-in-law. “They buy the tusks of elephants from the Athi and pay for them well; then they return to their own country. They come in peace. Why should we need to fear them?”

  Irumu shook his head doubtfully and filled his nostrils with snuff. He had aged greatly in the last few gruelling seasons. His hair, not recently shaved, was grey as ashes and his face deeply lined, although his light, darting eyes were still unclouded. But his limbs were stiff and skinny. Only with difficulty could he clamber into bed or lower himself slowly on to his three-legged stool. His hand shook so much that he could no longer hold the pincers steady to pull out his hairs, and one of his sons had to pluck his chin.

  “Never before have Wathukumu stayed to build houses,” he said. “Nor can I understand why they are digging ditches. And why have they not come before the elders’ council to explain their purpose, nor sent envoys to the council of war to ask permission to pass through the country? I do not like it; the omens are bad.”

  “Why must you worry?” Muthengi asked. “We can drive them out at any time we wish. Our warriors can resist even the onslaughts of the Masai; how then should we fear these Wathukumu, who are only a few?”

  “They have a strong magic,” Irumu said. “Karuri’s warriors are brave too, but they were defeated. And now we are ravaged by disease and greatly reduced in numbers.”

  “There is no magic greater than yours,” Muthengi replied. “If this stranger enters our country he shall be driven out with spear and sword. We who have repulsed the Masai of Laikipia can have nothing to fear.”

  “Your words are brave, my son,” Irumu said, “and your heart also; but sometimes words are like gourds: going to the river they make much noise, coming back they are silent. I am a very old man, but I do not remember that anything like this has happened before.”

  Muthengi smiled in his mind, but said nothing. Old men, he thought, always shake their heads when something that they have not been consulted about occurs.

  6

  WHEN the young bean shoots began to dust the earth with green, one of the red strangers came into the country at the head of a small column of men. A few of these were dressed alike in cloth that fitted them closely—tall, broad warriors with strange flattened faces, speaking a barbaric tongue. They marched together and slapped their feet down loudly on the ground, so that they could be heard a long way off. The others were young Kikuyu, men from Wyaki’s country, and they carried loads, like women, on their heads and backs.

  The stranger camped at Wathukumu, where the ivorytraders always stayed. The Athi came down from the forest carrying tusks and the stranger bought them, paying the usual price. Women came in the evening to sell milk and food, and were well received. But when all the ivory had been bought the stranger did not go. Instead, he sent word by one of the men from Wyaki’s that he wished to talk to the ruler of the district. This message was taken to Irumu, to Muthengi, and to several members of the senior elders’ council. The messengers did not know who was meant by the ruler of the country, since there was none ; but meetings of the warriors’ and of both the elders’ councils were summoned.

  Muthengi addressed the young men in great anger. No message, he said, had been received asking permission from the warriors to pass through the country. No envoys had come holding grass. The stranger’s arrival was therefore an act of war.

  “Go home to paint your bodies and bring out your weapons,” he exhorted them. “Let us drive these invaders from our country, sparing none. This stranger has only twelve warriors, and we shall overwhelm them like a flood.”

  The njamas agreed at once, but before they could disperse a message came from the senior elders’ council to say that a deputation was going to the stranger’s camp to ask the purpose of his visit. The elders wished no warlike action to be taken until the deputation had returned.

  Four members of the senior elders’ council presented themselves at the camp that evening, driving a small goat before them as a gift to show that they came in friendship. The red stranger met them; he had been painted, they thought, with ochre; his body was covered in cloth, like all Wathukumu, and his hair was smooth, flat and short. He neither squatted nor stood, but rested his buttocks against a piece of wood secured in place by four poles. He addressed them through an interpreter who was a Swahili, and whose Kikuyu words were hard to understand.

  The elders returned late that night to their homesteads with bewildered minds.

  “He spoke words which we cannot have heard aright,” the senior envoy reported to the council. “This we understood: that the stranger does not wish to go away. He says that he has come here to live, and that others like him will follow. At first I thought that he must wish to beg land ; but he did not enquire for the muramati of my clan, nor did he make offerings of beer. He says that he belongs to a very powerful ruler who lives a long way off and who has conquered our country; and that he, the servant of this ruler, has come here to settle lawsuits and to collect tribute. I thought that the interpreter must have made a mistake, but I asked him to repeat this part, and he said the same thing again.

  “Personally I think that the stranger is mad. Since we know that no one has conquered our country, how then can this distant ruler, who has never been here, send a servant to collect tribute ? And how can a stranger talk of administering justice in another land ? We did not know what to reply, for we thought that his words were the ravings of a lunatic, so we left him alone.”

  This report was greeted with incredulity and a good deal of laughter; but Muthengi was annoyed. Next day he summoned the warriors’ council again and declared:

  “This stranger says that he comes from a distant ruler to govern our land. Warriors! Have you yet been conquered by strangers ?”

  The warriors, with one voice, shouted “No !”

  “He says also that he comes to collect tribute for his master, our conqueror. Warriors ! Are you ready to pay him tribute ?”

  The sound of their denial startled the cultivators in the valley.

  “What, then, is your wish ? Shall we let this boastful stranger dwell amongst us, or shall we drive him out as we have driven out the Masai ?”

  The cry was like a peal of thunder over the mountain:

  “He shall go!”

  7

  NJAMAS hurried from homestead to homestead to warn the warriors, and soon the young men, freshly painted and fully clad for war, converged on the level meeting-ground close to Irumu’s. Muthengi and eight njamas went to the mundu-mugu’s hut and told him of the decision. There was no time now to consult the beans.

  Irumu rubbed his chin uneasily. He knew that the disease mothuro had reduced the available force of warriors by more than half, and that many of the survivors were still weak from famine. But when he saw that the limbs of the young men were already beginning to shake with desire for battle, he agreed to give them protection. A goat was quickly slaughtered and the warriors blessed with stomach contents mixed with honey, and their fingers bound with strips of flesh.

  Before the ceremony was over two scouts ran up to say that peculiar preparations were being made in the stranger’s camp. A fence of branches was being built and the men were being herded within like cattle. It seemed clear that the stranger meant to resist, yet his followers had no spears or shields.

  Muthengi laughed when he heard this, and brandished his spear. His body shone in the sunlight like the burnished bronze feathers of a sunbird, and ostrich feathers danc
ed above his head.

  “Indeed these men are cattle,” he cried, “and we young lions who sniff them from afar. Warriors, forward! Fall upon them like lions, let none escape alive !”

  A shouting, excited body of some eighty warriors—all that survived out of over two hundred—marched down into the valley to the ford below the stranger’s camp. Here they formed into three ranks—club-throwers, archers and spearmen—and stamped their feet to make the rattles speak. Then the warsong started, slowly at first, gaining speed and vigour as the voices swelled. The stamping quickened and the noise of rattles shook the leaves. When the limbs of every warrior were quivering in frenzy Muthengi, with a great shout, led the charge up the slope towards the camp above, hidden behind a belt of trees.

  Long-limbed warriors sped up the slope at his heels and through the trees to see a wall of thorns across the green pasture ahead. As they leapt into the open a noise of loud crackles, like the sound of elephants stamping through bamboos, filled their ears, and simultaneously four warriors, who led the charge behind Muthengi, pitched headlong to the ground. Several others halted in mid-stride and clapped hands to ribs or shoulders. The men behind checked their stride. No spears or arrows had been thrown, yet their companions were spurting blood.

  The first line, the club-men, crouched down behind their shields and approached the fence in crab-like bounds, Muthengi at their head. The big shields covered the whole of their bodies; they knew they were safe. They could see no one ahead; the enemy was hidden behind the wall.

  Another crackle of noises exploded in their ears and, without reason, five more warriors flung up their shields and toppled over, as though a violent blow had knocked them off their feet. An njama just behind Muthengi lay there in convulsions, his legs flaying the ground. Muthengi turned and saw blood staining the ground. Next to him lay Gacheche’s son, one of his own age-grade and kin, with a trickle of blood and froth oozing from his mouth.