Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  Fear of sorcery and desire to escape from poisoners had driven several others among Matu’s neighbours from their homes to cultivate new land on the Mau, where personal quarrels and old feuds between clans could no longer threaten their safety. He heard many such tales of witchcraft, duplicity and adventure, as he squatted over his magic beans in the shade of a tree. He learnt to tell by the tone of voice whether a man was lying or sincere, surly or even-tempered; whether desire for truth or for profit lay behind his visit. Although he was young, men found him easy to talk to and quick in his grasp of situations; his gentle, calm manner drew out their troubles as a skilled hand rubs pain from a cramp-afflicted stomach. Passions, hatreds, ambitions, fears, were spread before him like beans lying on a goatskin. He kept his own counsel, asking help only from the white sun, which was strong and saw all things, and from God, who looked across two lakes from Nyandarua to the Mau.

  CHAPTER VII

  War

  I

  MORE Europeans came to live in clearings on the edge of the forests of the Mau. Others brought ox-drawn knives to carve the great plain, which lay glistening in the sun like the pegged-out hide of a mighty cow. Beyond stretched a long line of purple mountains, sometimes as pale and diffident as a light cloud, at other times a dark vivid gash across the sky. On one day the smooth brow of the pale hill called by the Masai Menengai, and the lake’s bright lidless eye beneath it, would seem but an hour’s journey away; on the next the crater’s outline would be blurred by a faint mist of many colours, soft as the beat of a nightjar’s wing.

  The Europeans put up many wire fences and drove the big zebra herds away. They darkened the plain with their shambas, and cattle bomas arose like the tattoo marks on a warrior’s cheeks. Then, just as they seemed to have settled down to cultivate like reasonable men, a day came when suddenly, and without warning, many of them departed almost overnight. They left their cattle and belongings and even their wives behind, their crops halfway to harvest, and disappeared as if to escape a sorcerer who had threatened their lives.

  At first no one could offer any explanation for this new form of madness. Later, Matu heard that they had gone to fight in a war against other Europeans who lived a long way to the south. This surprised him, for he had not known that more than one kind of European existed in the world. He listened, however, to conversations at the Indian shops by the railway and heard that, just as there were Masai and Wakamba and Kikuyu, so there were many white tribes, and that these fought among each other in the same way. Matu returned to his homestead quickly and resolved to go no more to the shops until the battle had been fought. He did not want to get caught by the Europeans and made to go to war, as he had been made to build roads or drive away the Masai. He was more than ever pleased that he had left Karatina for a place beyond Muthengi’s reach.

  2

  A SEASON passed, and still the Europeans did not return. He could not understand why the battle had not taken place and one side or the other won a victory. The big houses stood empty, and men were no longer called to work at felling trees or digging out stumps.

  On the plains, however, there was much activity. Men were kept hard at work driving long spans of oxen and turning up the land with round knives. In a single day one such implement would do the work of perhaps a hundred women. The elders did not think much of the idea. “What,” they asked, “would become of the women, if oxen did all their work in the shamba ? There would be nothing for them to do, and then they would certainly get into mischief and commit adultery a great deal. It is much better for women to work. Then they obey their husbands, and cook food properly, and do not answer back.” But the younger folk, Matu among them, saw that with this implement a man would be able to cultivate much bigger shambas, and with far less trouble, than by hand.

  They did not, however, know how such things might be obtained. So Wanja continued to dig the shamba with a knife, while more and more of Matu’s time was spent at his neighbours’ homesteads. Although his son was not yet circumcised, he had grown to be fond of beer. At first he bought his wife cane for brewing, but then it was found that stronger beer could be made from the sweet brown substance sold at Indian shops, and known as jagoree. This saved a lot of trouble; there was no longer any need to crush and pound and squeeze. As a result women brewed more often, and hardly a day went by when a beer-drink was not held somewhere within reach. Many fell into bad habits and lurched home every evening dizzy and fuddled in the head. Young men, as well as old, made their wives brew, and the elders shook their heads over their snuff-bottles when they spoke of the breakdown of law and custom, and of the idleness and drunkenness of the youths.

  The price of grain at Njoro was very high. Wanja carried down her surplus to sell for rupees, and Matu’s hoard under the floor of his hut steadily grew. Within a year of the war’s beginning Wanja gave birth to another son, who was called Kaleo; and a season later Matu bought a second wife, a laughing sturdy girl who had come from Kiambu to bring pots and bananas to her brother. He paid fifty goats and three honey-barrels, and Wanja made ten brews of beer. He chose a shamba for her from the forest and cleared it, for now there was no European whose permission need be asked.

  3

  No one could understand why the war did not end and the Europeans return to their cattle and crops. News came that the enemy had been driven away and were being pursued into a distant country; but no cattle were seen coming back. It appeared that Europeans thought less of capturing cattle, which was the object of war, than of killing their enemy, which brought no advantage at all.

  Kagama’s eldest son went to Kiambu to look for a man who owed goats to his father, and stayed away for so long that some misfortune was feared. He returned, some months later, with a strange tale. He had found his father’s debtor in Nairobi outside an office of the Serkali, waiting in a line with many others. These men were called in, one by one, to see a European with buttons of shining metal on his coat, who sat under a piece of brightly-coloured cloth. This man asked their names and other questions and gave each of them a piece of paper, and they were taken away to a big camp. Kagama’s son went in to tell the European about the debt, but he found himself in the camp also. Here he was given food and made to march about with other people, and to dig ditches for a latrine.

  One day he passed a house where corpses were being carried out and put into a motor-car waiting outside. Fear seized him, for he knew then that the camp was unclean. That night he and two others climbed over the fence and escaped, and next day he found work with an Indian carrying big stones for house-building. He stayed there two months and then returned home with twelve rupees; but he had not been able to collect his father’s debt, for the debtor had gone away to Mombasa in a train. Now he drove a goat to Matu’s and asked to be purified, as he had slept in a camp where there had been corpses and was therefore unclean.

  After hearing this story, Matu decided that it would not be safe to leave the Mau. He did not do so even when he heard that his father was very ill. The message came with one of Ngarariga’s grown sons, Reri, who walked over the mountains with the news. Although Reri was a young man, still unmarried, tall and strong and at the age of dances, his hair was clipped short like an elder’s. He told Matu that all the young men cut their hair now, as Europeans did. They were no longer warriors, so why should they dress it in pigtails and feathers? Besides, dressed hair was heavy and dirty, and took a long time to do. He said that Europeans from the Serkali had taken a levy of cattle and rams from all the richer men. They had also called for volunteers to fight in the war, but nobody had agreed to go because no one had yet seen a friend or relative who had made a safe return.

  Reri was a fine dancer. His good looks and ready wit made him popular with all the girls. Several came to Matu coyly, and with much embarrassed laughter, to ask for magic to make the young man come to their mothers’ huts at night. In Matu’s opinion no magic was needed for this. He warned his cousin that several fathers were growing suspicious lest he
should rob other men’s barrels of their honey, but Reri only laughed.

  Events followed the course that Matu had foreseen. Two girls who became pregnant named Reri as their lover, and for each girl he was fined ten goats to go to the father, and three to the elders’ council. He had no money to buy goats, so the council decreed that his cousin Matu must pay the fine.

  Reri, somewhat subdued by this misfortune, promised to get the goats from his father to repay the fine. He left for his home, saying that he would return within two months; but he did not reappear. Matu was not surprised. He bore his loss as stoically as he could, and arranged with the father of one of the pregnant girls to marry her himself, deducting the amount of the fine from the bride-price that he had to pay.

  4

  MATU heard no more news of his parents for nearly two seasons. Then, late at night, one of Nduini’s sons arrived, tired and hungry, wearing tattered clothing that had once belonged to Europeans. He tapped on the door and called, and when Matu went to let him in it seemed as if a hunted animal were waiting for sanctuary outside.

  After Wanja had given him food he told his story. One day an njama had come to his homestead, he said, with a message from Muthengi: a big law case was to be held at Karatina and everyone was to attend. When he approached the market-place he saw that a wire fence had been put around it, making it into a big pen. He also saw a number of soldiers ordering people to enter the pen. He hid, waiting to see what would occur. When the pen was full the soldiers shut the gate, and all the people inside were trapped. He himself ran away and hid in the forest for fifteen days, and avoided capture; but since then he had not dared to appear openly on the road or at places where Europeans might be looking for him. So he had fled from his home to escape Muthengi’s njamas, who were capturing young men everywhere as if they had been seizing goats for the slaughter.

  He heard afterwards that the people in the pen had been divided into three batches. One batch was called Fita, and these were sent to Nairobi with a guard of soldiers. The second, a small batch, was called Shamba, and they went to work for Europeans on farms close to Tetu. The third was called Rotha; these were the old and infirm, and they were allowed to return to their homesteads.

  One night, soon after this, another man tapped on the door of Wanja’s hut furtively, long after dark, as Nduini’s son had done. Matu opened it cautiously and asked the stranger’s business. To his great astonishment a European’s voice answered him in Swahili; before Matu could recover the man had entered and crouched by the fire. His clothes were tattered and dirty, and he wore a blood-stained bandage around his head. He had no hat. Matu thought that he must be a fugitive, although there was a danger that he might turn out to be a spy.

  “I am very hungry,” this strange man said, “it is two days since I have eaten. Can you give me food?”

  Wanja served him with gruel and maize porridge, which he ate greedily; and he slept that night on skins in Matu’s thingira. Next day he thanked his host and said: “Do not tell the Serkali about my visit, for I am running away.” Wanja gave him food for the journey, and he vanished into the forest without saying where he intended to go. Matu did not give him away; but he never heard what became of the fugitive European, who also, no doubt, was trying to escape from the war.

  5

  ON every seventh day a market was held at Njoro. It was not to be compared with that at Karatina, so little was there on sale; still, one could buy Kikuyu food that came by train from Kiambu, food that no one had been able to grow at Njoro in spite of many attempts. Ochre and snuff, wire ornaments and cooking pots, were also on sale. Best of all, visitors to the market could gaze at the alluring wares on sale in the Indian shops: blankets of many colours, shirts and hats, tins in which to bury rupees, lamps and the fat to go in them, and sticks of tobacco that a few of the bolder young men would light and swallow.

  Sometimes the train arrived while Matu was at the market, and then he would stand beside it to watch the travellers swarming in and out. It was like an ant-heap with wings. People of more kinds than he had imagined possible were to be seen on their way to distant countries, mixed up in an astonishing manner. Here were young girls seated next to elders, skin to skin, unable to turn their heads away; rich men dressed like Europeans and poor men going without food; poisoners next to pregnant women, and young mothers dripping their milk on to children not their own. The train brought danger and thahu and many improprieties; but it also brought the flavour of adventure and the smell of the unknown. Where were so many people bound for, Matu wondered, and whence had they come ? Like a river they travelled onwards, but they never returned. In his youth the world had been a bud and he a beetle in its heart, enfolded by the protective petals of knowledge and truth; the world then had been a place of certitude. Now the petals had opened and floated away; he, the beetle that was left, could not tell what had become of them. On what could the beetle feed, how could it find protection from wind and sun and birds ? It swayed uncertainly and dangerously in space; the ground was strewn with the wreckage of the flower that had given it life.

  The train brought news as well as troubling thoughts. Matu was at the station when the Indian driver shouted to the platform crowd that the war was finished, that many Europeans were on their way back. He returned home in an excited frame of mind. Now, at last, he could go back to his own country to see his father and mother and all his relatives and friends.

  He left his two wives to tend the crops, and walked over the mountain to Tetu and beyond. When he arrived he found such a scene of desolation that his heart became like water and he wanted to turn and run. But he walked on, keeping his eyes on the path before his feet, to Waseru’s homestead. The entrance was closed with the shrub of death, and in the fence of the compound a hole had been torn. He turned his head away, grief and shame filling his heart. He had come too late; his father was dead.

  6

  AT Ngarariga’s Matu learnt that his mother had perished too. Ngarariga had grown rib-thin and scrawny and his voice was heavy with despair. His three sons, Reri amongst them, had been taken for the war and had not returned; he scarcely hoped to see them again. Last season’s millet rains had failed entirely; the crop had not even germinated. The bean rains had been late and very poor. The crops had grown, although feebly; but just when they had needed warmth and sunshine, the sun had withdrawn behind heavy layers of cloud and a harsh cold had paralysed the crops. Every morning thick mists had swirled about the ridges, wrapping themselves like the spirits of snakes around trees and bush; maize, beans, sweet potatoes had shrivelled in the soil.

  A feeling of despair had settled over the ridges. The strong young men were gone, no one knew whither; nor was it believed that they would ever return. At night the land lay silent save for the whisper of leaves and running water and the whistle of spirits, for no dances and no circumcision ceremonies were held. By day pot-bellied children sprawled listlessly in the shade of empty granaries with misery in their eyes. Women, racked with hunger, sat under the eaves plaiting baskets—there was little to be done in the fields—or ranged already thrice-combed shambas for arum roots or withered sweet potatoes. Some went into the forest and dug up wild roots to stew. Old men grew thinner still, and too weak to move; many of them lay all day in huts which grew odorous and defiled, and when death came there was no one to hear their last instructions.

  After several months of hunger three wagon-loads of maize came up the road, watched by eyes dulled with lack of hope. They went to Tetu, and word was spread around that anyone who could follow them would be given gruel. All who came were given a daily ration of maize flour, and Tetu became like a big camp. There was great thankfulness, for although the food was insufficient to satisfy hunger, it was enough to keep away starvation. But those who were too old or sick to walk could not reach salvation.

  When more wagon-loads arrived, the European in charge at Tetu said that a road would be built to Embu, and that all who wanted food must work on it. Many of the able-bodie
d men and women, even some elders, agreed to do so. Ngarariga, although he carried a muramati’s staff and had long ago ceased to think of labour, decided to work rather than to face starvation. He carried heavy loads of soil, and was given flour each night for gruel. Slowly he, and others with him, regained their strength. It seemed that at last the worst was over. The Serkali had been able to find maize, and would keep alive all those strong enough to work.

  7

  BUT before the new crops were harvested a pestilence swept through the country like a flame, leaving the ground strewn with corpses. Its name was Kimiri,* and it took the form of a high fever. People would wake up cool and healthy, and within two days they would be dead. No man dared go into another’s homestead for fear of entering a hut where a corpse had been. By every path and roadside lay rotting corpses, their flesh moving slightly, like wind-stirred leaves, with a mass of maggots finishing work that hyenas had begun. Some lay in the attitude in which they had fallen, too weak to go on, a water-gourd or an empty calabash by their side.

  It was the pestilence that took Waseru, Ngarariga said. The old man had escaped the famine, for Muthengi had sent him food. He was feeble and nearly blind, and sat all day under the eaves of his hut taking snuff or muttering to himself. He asked often for his sons. Sometimes Muthengi visited him, but not often; and he called in vain for Matu. Kimiri killed him quickly; and within two days Wanjeri also was consumed by the fever, as a cricket by a swift grass fire.