Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  “The elephant is not overburdened by its tusks,” Muthengi said, moved with pity for his father’s distress. “Seasons have been good, and goats have increased; all the married men of our clan will contribute. Besides, these strangers pay me rupees which I can exchange for goats at Tetu, and now that I am a chief njama I can take goats from others. It is a disaster, certainly, but not one from which we shall be unable to recover.”

  The collection of contributions towards the blood-price—one hundred and seventeen goats—from all the property-owners of the clan was a long, tedious affair. Before it had been completed, the stranger from Tetu came again to camp at Wathu-kumu’s. He summoned Muthengi and several of the elders and asked if all was well in the country; they replied that it was, except that the bean rains were too heavy and the young plants were being drowned by unending torrents. The stranger replied that this was the will of God, and that he had come to collect tribute again, which he would do once in every two seasons. This time no one was to pay in goats, but in rupees, and at the rate of two for every hut. The elders asked him where rupees could be obtained and he said that young men could get them by working in Tetu at tasks in which they would be instructed.

  “I do not understand the purpose of these rupees,” one of the elders complained. “If the stranger already has great quantities stored at Tetu, why does he give them to us and then ask for them back again? How will this make him any richer?”

  The interpreter explained that the rupees were like sticks to show how much work a man had done; for every month’s labour he received two rupees. It was therefore a device by which the newcomers could get young men to do the work that they required. “It is the stranger’s custom,” he added. “In his country everything is done with rupees. You must do as he says, or he will be very angry.”

  Next day a message summoned Matu to the camp. He found the stranger outside his tent in the attitude peculiar to him, perched on his long-legged stool, with the magic stick that burnt marks on strips of thin white bark in front of him. Matu saw that Kabero, smiling and at ease, stood beside the stranger under the shade of a tree.

  “The stranger has heard,” the interpreter said, “that your father is paying blood-price to a man called Karue, because you killed his son in a fight.”

  “It is true that our clan is paying blood-price,” Matu said. “It is most unjust, because Karue killed a woman and two uncircumcised girls of our family; but his son insulted us, and so he was slain at our homestead, and we cannot dispute the claim.”

  The interpreter spoke to the stranger and then he said:

  “It is against the stranger’s law to kill another person. You must come to Tetu, where he will sit in judgment on you for having killed Karue’s son.”

  Greatly to Matu’s surprise, two iron bracelets joined by a chain were fixed around his wrists, so that he could not move his hands freely. Then he was given to a warrior and roughly treated, and made to walk all the way to Tetu with his hands tied. When he arrived he was put into a hut whose door was kept shut as if it were night and given food so finely ground that he could not eat it. He was too bewildered to protest, for the matter had passed altogether beyond anything he could understand.

  6

  A FEW days later he was taken to the stranger’s square light house and made to stand behind a wooden barrier. He was delighted, however, to see that Muthengi had come, and Kabero and Ngarariga also. But his pleasure was spoilt by the presence of Karue, who sat apart, his sharp eyes flicking over the room like the tongue of a lizard.

  The stranger kept his eyes fixed on the magic object where, Matu had been told, words had in some way taken shape and could be seen by the eye. He spoke for a long time, and then the interpreter tried to explain his meaning. But the interpreter was a newcomer belonging to some strange race; his tongue was clumsy and confused and he made many mistakes. Matu could not understand much of what he was trying to say. So far as he could make out, the stranger had been told by Kabero that he, Matu, had killed Karue’s son, and wished to know whether this was true.

  Matu replied by telling the story in detail: how Karue had killed his two sisters and his father’s wife, the judgment of the elders, and the insults of Karue’s son.

  “It was Muthengi who killed the youth, not I,” he concluded. “Muthengi’s sword is swifter than mine, and he is braver. But I do not understand the purpose of this, since our clan has not denied the liability. Tell Karue that the blood-price will be paid, so there is no need to bring a case, even though he owes my father seventy-eight goats.”

  The interpreter translated this and then said: “This stranger is saying blood-price no exists. Blood-price will not your father pay. No blood-price but the man who is killing dies. Nor is poisoning possible now strangers come. They have no magic, therefore you have no magic. That is stranger’s will.”

  As Matu could not unravel this at all he made no reply. Muthengi, however, said: “I do not understand. Does this stranger say that our clan need pay no blood-price for Karue’s son?”

  After the interpreter had spoken to his master he said: “Yes. No blood-price need pay. Man die instead.”

  “Then this stranger is a most clever and wise man,” Muthengi said with enthusiasm. “He can see into the hearts of others, and he knows that Karue is a liar and a poisoner and a thief. It is certainly unjust to pay blood-price to such a man. Tell the stranger that now I know he is a man of great wisdom, and that I will always come to him for judgment.”

  The interpreter translated, and then replied:“Stranger being pleased you like good law.” The stranger made more marks of burning with his stick on the white bark.

  Karue, in whose face bewilderment and rage had mingled, broke into a tirade of indignation, but he was silenced by a loud shout from the stranger.

  “Leave alone words, you go,” the interpreter said. Karue relapsed into a bewildered silence.

  “The stranger wants,” the interpreter continued, “where is sword from above your shoulder ?”

  Matu puzzled over this for a little, and then found the meaning. “You ask me about the wound on my shoulder? The sword of Karue’s son cut me as he struck.”

  Then Kabero was called and questioned. Matu was amazed to hear him tell a great number of lies. First he said that he had been present at the fireside with Karue’s son; then he described a fight which he had never seen; and then he swore that the sword of Matu had been the sword that killed. Matu tried to interrupt him, but was silenced roughly. Then he realised what had occurred. Kabero had heard of the charm that had been hung in the tree to bring barrenness to his young wife; he was angry with Matu and was seeking revenge by making trouble between him and the stranger. It was a subtle way to conduct a quarrel, typical of Irumu’s crafty and self-confident son.

  When the young man had finished the interpreter said: “You hear words by Kabero. What you saying?”

  “He is lying,” Matu replied indignantly. “He was not there, and it was Muthengi, not I, who killed Karue’s son. But what does it matter? Are not Muthengi and I brothers? Whichever it was that held the sword, our father Waseru and other members of our clan must still pay the blood-price.”

  7

  DURING Kabero’s speech Muthengi had been deeply absorbed in thought. Now he looked up at the stranger and asked if he might address his brother. The man assented, and he said:

  “This stranger appears to be our friend. He has made a pact of brotherhood with me and now I think that he wants to help us, as a brother should. He sees that Karue is a poisoner, and says that our clan need pay no blood-price for the death of the youth. Therefore we ought to help him, as he is our friend. It is evident that for some reason he wishes you to say that your sword killed Karue’s son. It does not matter which of us did it, and as he seems anxious for you to agree to what he says, perhaps it would be best for you to do so.”

  Matu thought this over while the interpreter spoke with the stranger. There appeared to be good sense in what Muthengi s
aid. The matter was a detail, and if it would please the stranger, who was clearly on their side against Karue, it could do no harm.

  “Very well,” he replied. “If he says that the sword was mine, I will not disagree.”

  The interpreter was clearly puzzled by the exchange and uncertain of the meaning of all the words.

  “The stranger likes to understand,” he said, “if your sword was sword of kill?”

  “Tell him yes, if that is his will,” Matu replied.

  The stranger burnt marks with his stick for a long time, and then spoke at great length. The interpreter looked at Matu and said:

  “Judgment against you, you killed. Men are themselves being killed because their anger speaks with swords. They are to be strangled by this stranger until dead. You lucky, you will not be dead, because the sword of Karue’s son hit above your shoulder. You will stay here in Tetu for six seasons to belong to the stranger, you now his.”

  Matu said nothing, for the words did not seem to make sense. He supposed that the interpreter had made a mistake. Muthengi, however, asked: “But why is Matu to stay here in Tetu ? The affair of the young man’s death is between Karue and my father Waseru. What has the stranger to do with it?”

  “That is stranger’s law. Matu killed, he evil man. Therefore he stays with stranger.”

  “Does the stranger give him to Karue?” Muthengi persisted.

  “No. He stays here.”

  “Who gives him food?”

  “The stranger gives him food.”

  “Then what does Karue receive in compensation for his son, who is dead?”

  “He not receive anything.”

  “That I cannot understand!” Muthengi exclaimed. “If a man loses his son, or a child his father, must not his family be given compensation for their loss? How else can justice be done?”

  “Stranger’s justice different,” the interpreter said. “Matu must stay here.”

  “Then the stranger gets something for Karue’s loss, and Karue’s clan gets nothing at all,” Muthengi said. “This seems to me a very peculiar law, and one with no justice in it at all. Now I understand how these strangers have become so exceedingly rich; when they sit in judgment they award nothing to the injured person, but everything to themselves.”

  “That is the law nevertheless,” the interpreter said. The stranger spoke sharply to his njamas, who drew their feet together with a loud noise; and Matu, too confused to make a protest, was led away.

  CHAPTER III

  Contact

  I

  MATU was now compelled to lead a strange, comfortless life whose purpose he could not divine. At sunset he was herded like an ox into a fireless house with men of many age-grades and clans and given a paste of maize ground fine like millet to eat. At first he dared not touch it, since he did not know who had cooked it nor what poisons it might contain. Hunger compelled him to take the risk; then he found it was badly cooked and tasteless, and clogged his bowels.

  By day he and his fellows marched out together to work, guarded always by a man who would kill them, so they were told, if they ran away. Once two young men did make off when the guard was not looking, but they were not killed. They were, however, captured and brought back to Tetu, and here they were badly beaten, as if they had been disobedient women. When Matu saw the weals on their backs he decided that it was not worth trying to escape. He expected Muthengi to come to fetch him any day, for he knew that there had been some mistake and that his brother would put it right.

  As day after day went by and Muthengi did not appear his misery grew. He began to fear that he would never again return to his own country. Muthengi, his father, his whole family had cast him aside like the squeezed-out pulp of cane : perhaps they had even betrayed him for a bribe of goats. Death would creep upon him among all these strangers—some of them, perhaps, unclean—while he was sleeping in this cold, empty house, or working senselessly under the hot sun clearing a shamba in which nothing was ever planted.

  Daily he grew more listless, and often the guards spoke fiercely to him in a foreign tongue. His axe fell with blows as light as those of a woodpecker’s beak on the gravel that they were digging from a pit. Then sores returned to his legs until he could barely walk, and a black, buzzing cloud of flies followed wherever he went, fattening on the oozing pus.

  One day a black-bearded, light-skinned man whom he later learnt to call an Indian came and examined his legs and took him to a separate house, where he rubbed the sores with a sort of fat and then wrapped white cloth around them. This was evidently a kind of medicine, but since no goat was slain nor prayers offered, Matu had no faith that his sores would be cured. They were very painful, and he was glad that death was near.

  When his companions were taken out to work early next morning Matu was told to stay behind. The chief of the guards, a rough-mannered Swahili with a face full of little pits as if it had been half-eaten by ants, said :

  “Come with me, you. Because you are as feeble as a girl, and a fool as well, you are to be given easier work to do—work suitable for weaklings and half-wits.”

  Matu scarcely listened to what was said. He moved on his bandaged legs slowly because of their weakness, and followed the Swahili to the stranger’s house.

  2

  IN his new work Matu learnt much about the inexplicable habits of the red strangers. Every morning his sores were treated by the Indian, who seemed to be a sort of mundu-mugu, and then he went to the stranger’s house and was given work. Sometimes he dug in a small shamba and planted seeds. When they came up they were different from any plants that he had seen before. Some had big leaves which were plucked and, so he was informed, cooked and eaten like the spinach which grew behind his mother’s hut; but others were not eaten at all. They produced flowers in great quantities, and of bright colours. When he asked what was done with them he was told nothing, that the stranger liked to see them there; but this was impossible to believe. One day he looked through the open door of the stranger’s house and saw them inside, and then he understood that they were needed for some ceremony, doubtless connected with the stranger’s magic and too secret to be mentioned by name.

  He enjoyed planting and tending them, and as time went on he grew familiar with the strange plants and could recognise them all. He began to discover a pleasure in watching them bud and unfold their brilliant petals. He could see that, massed in small clumps or in long strips, the flowers produced a sort of pattern like the design on a shield or on a belt of beads, and he sometimes imagined that he was making a living belt around the waist of a young warrior whose ochred body was the red earth, with green hair of grass.

  This work made him happier, and he thought less often of his family and home. He seemed to be under the charge of a man called Karanja, who worked in the stranger’s house. Karanja was a Kikuyu of his own tribal group and age-grade, though from a distant part of the country; and these bonds united them at once. He was generous by nature and always ready with a joke. Matu found it hard to believe that the stranger was given food by men, but this apparently was so. There were no women in his household; even his room was swept by men. Matu began to wonder if he were indeed some sort of god, since God alone had no wife or children.

  When he asked about this Karanja laughed and told him that in the stranger’s country there were many frog-skinned women, and that perhaps this one (who was called Kichui because he wore a ring) had six or seven wives. Karanja added that these strangers seemed to be normal in regard to sex, although overhasty in their technique, and lacking in subtlety. Some had married Kikuyu girls, but they did not eat with them. They ate many strange things, Karanja added, including large birds. Matu was shocked to hear this; such a depraved diet would certainly make them unclean, and he was afraid that the stranger would pass on the infection. There was no mundu-mugu among his companions and if he contracted a thahu he did not know how he could be cleansed.

  3

  IN front of the stranger’s house was a flat, op
en sward of excellent grass. When Matu first came there were no goats or cattle on it, and he concluded that it must have been set aside for some very highly valued herd. This idea was confirmed when, during the long dry period before the bean-rains, Kichui ordered six men to carry large cans of water from the river and to pour the contents on to the ground through a vessel fitted with a clever device that turned the water into raindrops. Matu was much impressed and wondered with growing interest what manner of beast could be worthy of such preparations.

  One day, when he arrived for work, he found a strange contraption with two long horns of wood standing on the pasture. It was moving backwards, and a man gripping it by the horns followed behind. As it moved it made a loud noise, like countless grasshoppers singing by a high waterfall.

  At first he thought that it must be alive. It appeared to be devouring the grass at an astonishing rate as it moved. In front was a thick sward, ankle-high; where it had passed only level turf, smooth as a grinding-stone, was left. He gazed at it dumbfounded, and would have run away if the guard who took him to work every morning had not been there. Surely, he thought, only a beast of enormous magical powers could eat at such a pace.

  The creature stopped, and the man with it; the noise ceased.

  “Come here,” the man said. “You are to take this cord and pull. And do not let the string grow slack, or I shall know that you are lazy.”

  Matu approached cautiously, eyeing the grass-eater with apprehension. He did not know whether it might charge, like a rhino, although it was small. He took hold of the cord but still it made no move.

  “Pull,” said the man behind, “you are very slow.”