Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  His only remaining problem was to acquire goats. Fortunately, Muthengi now had so many that one man could not possibly supervise their care; and so he distributed the surplus for safe keeping among his kin. A flock of thirty was handed over to Matu to look after, together with two rams for Wanja to fatten. The recognised fee for these services was two kids out of every ten born, and one goat for the fattened rams. In this way Matu hoped slowly to assemble the nucleus of a flock of his own.

  He gave Kichui’s birds to Wanja and she built them a small cage on legs next to her granary. Here they slept at night, safe from hyenas, gennets and mongooses. The female had so little sense that she did not make a nest, but laid her eggs in different places, generally on the refuse heap, in the most improvident way. Because of their homelessness Wanja called them the beggars. She collected the eggs, however, and put them in the birds’ cage, and in due course a number of fluffy yellow chicks were hatched. Wanja grew quite attached to these and fed them with a handful of grain now and then; but she could not bring herself to eat a bird. For a long time, therefore, the beggars were quite useless.

  When the young plants sprouted, Matu felt at last a deep satisfaction ; for now the crops which his wife tended would be his to reap and the smoke which filled his lungs in the evening came from his own fire.

  6

  SOON after his marriage he paid a visit to Irumu, to find the mundu-mugu shrunken and wasted with age. His eyes were blurred and a few white whiskers straggled from his chin. Skin was stretched as taut as drying cow-hide over his bones.

  He listened with nodding head to all that Matu told him of Tetu and the road of snakes, and said;

  “At first I thought that these strangers would go, but now I know that they intend to stay, and that because of their magic we cannot drive them away. It is the will of God. Now the power of the elders is broken like the bones of a goat beaten before the council. Men steal and evade punishment, for thieves need no longer pay compensation. Instead, they are taken to Tetu to work for the strangers. What sort of justice is this, where the judge receives something and the injured one nothing? Is it not in itself a kind of theft? The country is like a swarm of bees when the queen is dead. Soon I shall die, for I have seen enough.”

  Then Irumu asked Matu if he still saw visions when he slept. Matu replied that he did. Sometimes he saw the rainbow, in the form of a snake, taking sheep from a hut; he saw a giant with cattle coming out of his knee, and goats being driven to a sacrifice, and the faces of the dead; once a lion had spoken to him in a high voice like a woman’s, and once he had travelled to the top of Kerinyagga and seen the feet of God, which were as big as mountains and had long claws that gripped the rock in many directions like the roots of a gigantic fig-tree.

  Irumu nodded; all this, he said, was a sign from God that Matu was to become a mundu-mugu. He told Matu to go away, to spend one night alone in the forest, and then to return with a pure-white goat, white as the petals of the flower kangei, without a single black hair. He must bring also the skins of eighteen goats and a gourd in which the two kinds of beer were mixed; and then he would be initiated into the lowest grade. There were many secrets that he could not learn until his eldest children were circumcised.

  7

  MATU collected the eighteen skins with difficulty, and on the appointed day he drove the white goat to Irumu’s. Here were gathered Irumu and seven of his colleagues in magic, with many of Matu’s kinsfolk who had brought gruel, cooked food and beer. When Irumu had asked a blessing from God and wisdom from the sun, the white goat was suffocated. Some of its blood was mixed with beer in the long narrow-necked gourd which was to contain Matu’s fortune-telling beans, and sipped by Matu and all the magicians. Irumu then led Matu into the bush to collect beans from the mubagé bush and strips of the creeper mwimba. Each mundu-mugu contributed a handful of beans from his gourd, including several objects of special significance; two cowrie shells joined together, the sign that a woman would bear twins; a piece of ear-ring from a Masai warrior, the sign of victory in battle; the head of an arrow; the horn of a goat; the tooth of a lion killed by a herder on the plain.

  Irumu then took his pupil to one side and read his fortune, showing him how future events might be divined. Next, the old mundu-mugu gave him nine small gourds and the appropriate medicine to go into each. One powder made youths attractive to girls, another enabled girls to fascinate young men; a third conferred bravery, a fourth removed obstacles from the path, a fifth brought peace between enemies. Three different medicines brought good luck and riches, and one averted evil magic. Ten little ruffs were cut from the skin of the goat’s right leg and slipped over the necks of the ten gourds; other strips were tied around Matu’s wrists and fingers. A feast followed, and the white goat’s flesh was shared among the magicians. Matu stoppered the gourds with cows’ tails and put them in the magic bag by which all would know him for a mundumugu.

  Next morning he learnt the secrets of his tutor’s medicines. He was shown the tree whose burnt bark, rubbed on the throat and navel, cured gonorrhœa, and the bush whose root expelled spirits causing stomach sickness. He was told how the root of a milky-sapped tree revived a man who had fainted, how the seeds of another drive out a cold in the head, how the fruit of a third, infused in water, cured diarrhœa, and how the ashes of the feathers of the tick-bird, rubbed on the body, cured impotency in men or sterility in women. He was given a little of the fine yellow earth which, blown over a man, would make him invisible, and some powder which, buried in the ground, would cure madness. Irumu also showed him a rare shrub whose root and bark, ground to a fine powder and sprinkled over food, would kill the man who ate it slowly and without fuss, and he pointed out other shrubs whose ashes, rubbed on to forehead, fingers and toes, were antidotes to poisons.

  8

  MATU’S first child was a boy. When it was safely delivered, he went to the river and cut five sticks of cane. Wanja chewed some of the pulp and spat the juice into the infant’s mouth, so that in after life its nature should be sweet and its temper mild. For five days no one but midwives entered the hut. On the fifth Wanja was washed, her head shaved and the hut swept out with leaves. A goat was killed and she was purified and then a feast of rejoicing was held among the men of Matu’s clan. He was so delighted that he gave Wanja a small fat ram for herself to make her strong.

  The skin of the goat was carefully felled with an iron scraper and sewn with a thorn-spike needle into a sling. In this the baby passed most of its infancy, going with its mother every day to the shamba. From this swaying, sun-hot eminence it grew to know the world through a flickering veil of flies. Matu named it Karanja after his friend at Tetu, because he hoped that it would grow up to be as clever.

  He was kept busy telling fortunes and making charms, for there were many quarrels. Young men who had not been taken by the stranger’s men to Tetu, or made to labour on the road of snakes, had little to do. They no longer needed to train themselves for war, or to protect the cattle against Masai raiders. They danced a great deal, and dressed their hair; they played the game giuthi, and sometimes demanded beer when their mothers were brewing, although this made their fathers deeply angry. But now, if an elder of the council saw a young man drinking and threatened him with a stick the young man would complain to the stranger, and the elder would be taken to Tetu and perhaps fined three or four rupees. People who had been wronged, knowing that they would get no satisfaction from the elders’ council as of old, would often resort to magic to bring sterility on their enemy’s wives or cows, and illness to his goats and children. Matu gave many such medicines to his clients, and found a great deal of sickness to cure.

  9

  WITH every season that passed Irumu grew more gaunt and bony, his eyes more rheumy and his limbs feebler. He spent long days in the shade of granary or hut, half asleep. A morning came when he could not leave his bed. He sent for his surviving brothers and all his sons and told them how his property was to be divided. He charged his sons to
bury his body, as befitted an important man, and then in a low but urgent voice he said:

  “My kinsmen, you have seen a more powerful magic than mine come into the land. Your feet are set on strange paths; they travel away from the knowledge that has been handed down to us from our ancestors, generation by generation, from all that the spirits of our forefathers guard, towards wild cold places of which we can know nothing at all. Against this new magic the wisdom of our ancestors is as dust blown against a rock, or as a twig carried down by a river in flood.

  “Lately I have seen visions of a land in which there are no trees, but only pestilence and famine, and the cries of women whose sons and husbands will not return. As a young girl’s apron protects her from men of evil intention, so trees protect us from our enemies. When women walk all day to seek firewood, then shall evil come, and when the cultivation lies naked under the sun. But you must be patient; one day the pestilence will be driven out, and on the day when trees again darken the ridges, then shall good fortune return. Then evil spirits will fly underground, and young boys will herd cattle, and the hair of the warriors will be cut short.

  “Remember, therefore, be patient under your sufferings; do not try to drive away the strangers with spears or with magic, for they have deadlier spears and a stronger magic than we. Why they have come I know not, but they have come in peace, and perhaps one day God will send them sense, so that they will be able to understand our customs and our law.”

  The long speech exhausted the old man, and at nightfall life left his body quietly in the hut. Irumu’s importance justified his burial, and he had sons to perform the task. When the grave was dug four sons wrapped his body in an ox-hide and laid it on its side with the knees drawn up and the head towards the west. His hut was pulled down and the materials scattered over the grave. Among them was his bag of medicine gourds, whose magic had exorcised so many spirits and brought comfort to the bewildered and the sick. No other hand could touch the gourds that had been his. They were left for gradual dissolution before slow attacks of sun, rain and all-devouring insects. In a few seasons a young mununga tree, from whose spikes charms were made, sprouted from among the rotted timbers. This was kept inviolate, even to its smaller branches, from axe or fire. It was recognised as the special resting-place of Irumu’s spirit.

  CHAPTER V

  Men of God

  I

  ONE day Matu heard that two strangers had started to build a house on a hill called Tumu-Tumu, beyond Karatina. His chickens were now laying many eggs and he decided to take some over to see if he could make a sale. He found four large houses of grass, built on the flat crest of the hill. But no ditch had been dug, nor could he see any warriors, although he looked for them by the doors of all the houses.

  Finally he found the person who cooked for the stranger and sold him the eggs. Presently a man who wore a long white robe like a Wathukumu, but who was in fact a Kikuyu from Kiambu, came into the kitchen, and Matu was able to question him.

  These strangers, he learnt, were not the same as Kichui, although they spoke the same tongue. He was surprised to hear that they did not collect rupees or goats. He was even more surprised to be told that they had something to do with God. They brought a message, the man from Kiambu said, from God, which they wished to give to the Kikuyu people. Matu asked if they had been to the top of Kerinyagga to talk to God and his informant said no, because this was the God of the strangers who did not live on Kerinyagga at all, but very high up in the sky.

  He was interested in these strangers, and stayed on next day to see what they were like. He saw a young man who was evidently sick, since he wore a beard. Matu assumed that this must be a son of the elder who had spoken with God; but Kamau, his informant, told him that this young man was the chief stranger. He had with him one wife, and a friend. Matu thought that Kamau must be mistaken, for only old men could talk with God; these people were far too young for such a sacred function.

  The chief stranger, hearing of Matu’s presence, came up and greeted him in Kikuyu. The words were so badly pronounced that Matu wanted to laugh, but he managed to avoid such a breach of manners. The stranger asked if he would like to work in the garden. Matu accepted, for although he did not need rupees and had his own shamba, he was interested in this place, so different from Tetu, and wanted to find out what it was for.

  2

  HE worked for a month at Tumu-Tumu and discovered many curious things. The biggest building of all, made of mud and poles with a pole sticking up out of the roof, seemed always to be empty; and he asked Kamau the reason for this.

  “That is a place where people go to talk to God,” Kamau said.

  Matu was very surprised. “Why do they not go to a fig-tree?” he asked. “The fig is sacred to God, because its roots have grown from the sky, and God sends spirits there to eat sacrifices.”

  “This God does not eat sacrifices,” Kamau replied. “He does not like them.”

  “How can God fail to like a good fat ram without blemish, the pick of the flock?” Matu asked, even more amazed. “And why should God listen to a prayer which is not considered to be worth a sacrifice by those who pray?”

  “All the same, the strangers do not sacrifice rams or he-goats,” Kamau said. “They talk to God in a loud voice and sing, and then he listens to them.”

  “God listens to a song ?” Matu asked incredulously. “Surely he does not attend to such trifles as that!”

  “This God does not mind; but when people disobey him he uses a very strong magic to turn them into salt, and he sends cattle plagues and diseases. But he loves everyone, and when a small bird, such as an njigi, dies, he can hear it fall.”

  “That is absurd,” Matu said. “Birds are senseless things which eat millet; God cannot possibly be interested in them.”

  “The strangers say he is, nevertheless. He has a very big bird in the sky which he sends with messages, and it helps him to rule. It can fly from here to the big water, called in Swahili the sea, without rest. He also has a son, who was born in the country of the strangers, but was killed there a long time ago.”

  “That is quite impossible,” Matu said. “God has no children, nor wives, nor goats. He is quite alone. Everyone knows that.”

  “This God had a son,” Kamau insisted, “who was killed by very wicked men who did not listen to what he said. All this is recorded in signs, and those who can understand them know exactly what happened, although it occurred many generations ago.”

  “Has this God, then, a wife?”

  “No, there is no wife. God chose a virgin and she became the mother of his child.”

  “But that is a very shocking thing indeed !” Matu protested. “If a girl conceives before she is married, everyone ridicules her, and the man is fined ten goats. That story cannot possibly be true.”

  “It was magic,” Kamau explained. “She did not lie with any one, yet she conceived.”

  “Now I know that this is all untrue!” Matu exclaimed. “Can a plant sprout from the earth without a seed, or a child grow in its mother’s womb without the intervention of a man? All this has nothing whatever to do with God.”

  “You are very ignorant,” Kamau retorted angrily. “You do not know anything, and for that reason when you are dead you will go to a place where there is a very big fire and there you will roast like a yam for many, many seasons.”

  “Now I see that your sense has flown off like a bee,” Matu said. “That is quite impossible.”

  “You think so because you are ignorant. I have become a follower of this stranger’s God, who is very much more powerful than any other and protects me from illness without my going to a mundu-mugu to get charms. When I die my spirit will go into the sky, where I shall find many companions, women as well as men, and be very well content.”

  “Are there any cattle and goats in this place as well?”

  “No, I do not think so, but there is much singing, and a kind of musical instrument, bigger than a flute.”

 
“I do not think it sounds a very good place,” Matu said.

  3

  THOSE who were working for the strangers at Tumu-Tumu had been asked to bring their children for the white man to see. Many refused, fearing that he might have an evil eye. A few brave fathers took the risk. Their children were taken to one of the grass houses and kept there all the morning. The stranger, whose name was Sasi because his hair was the colour of ochre, said that he intended to teach them to speak to God. The startled parents explained that only elders could understand such matters, and that it was both useless and disrespectful to teach children to address God; but Sasi replied that the children must come every day for a month. A rumour arose that he intended to fatten and eat them, and at first their mothers refused to let them go. But in time the scare blew over, and a small number returned to Tumu-Tumu to hear stories about the foreign God.

  It soon appeared that Sasi intended to teach them the magic from whose secret so much of the strangers’ power was drawn: the magic by which words could be made visible.

  When Matu heard this, he could not believe it to be true. No one in his senses would impart the secrets of so strong a magic to uncircumcised children: creatures of no knowledge or experience, unable to understand magic, to cast out spirits, to administer medicines or charms. It was so absurd that Matu dismissed these strangers at Tumu-Tumu as even more lacking in sense than the others he had encountered. This liking for children, members of the age furthest of all away from God, must be due, he thought, to the childishness of their minds; in children they could see their own reflection.