Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  6

  OF the many curious things that Karanja saw in Marafu’s house, the most remarkable was the way in which a spring could be summoned out of a hole in the wall, and then made to cease again. He spent many hours twisting a piece of metal to cause this miracle, until Charagu found him, and cuffed him on the head. He could not find out where the water came from. Nor could he understand what was meant when Charagu brought him some of the vessels that the Europeans used for eating and drinking, and said, “Wash these.” Karanja replied :

  “How can I, when they are already clean?”

  Charagu showed him a little dark liquid in the bottom of two vessels, and said:

  “Fool, have you no eyes? Europeans will have no dirt or stain on any vessel, just as there are no hairs on the back of a lizard.”

  Karanja marvelled at such an idea, for at home a calabash would go many days without washing. When he went inside the European house he saw that everything was very clean. Even the ashes of the fire were taken away every morning. There was no smell save that of plucked flowers. For the first time he realised that in his own home there was a great deal of dirt. On the other hand a hut was warm, whereas the European house was bitterly cold, and he wondered how Marafu and his wife could sleep at nights. It was fortunate that Marafu was rich enough to afford many blankets, and not afraid that leopards would jump in through the open hole in the wall.

  Charagu told him that he must not enter a European house in the piece of cloth, stained with red ochre, that he wore knotted on one shoulder. He was given six shillings and told to buy a shirt from the Indian, and a pair of shorts to clothe his legs. He strutted back as proudly as a cockerel, feeling that he was now just like a European. But sometimes European clothes were an embarrassment, and when he went to the latrine he left his shorts behind in the kitchen. Charagu and the others laughed at him and he ran away and hid in mortification; but after that he learnt how to deal with shorts. Charagu also gave him a lump of fat and told him to rub it between his hands in water. Karanja identified its smell as that of Europeans. He was pleased that he was now like a European in smell as well as in looks. He began to despise young men who smeared themselves with ochre, which Charagu said was very dirty. For some time he could not, however, bring himself to eat European food, which was tasteless, unsatisfying, and frequently unclean.

  He soon became fascinated by the magic which he learnt to know as writing. He would sit in a rapt silence and watch Charagu tracing signs with his stick on the white bark. Charagu often sent messages in this way to his friends in Nairobi or Kiambu, and sometimes replies would be brought back by a man sent on a horse to the station. When Karanja realised that a Kikuyu like himself could do such things he was filled with wonder, as though for the first time he had heard a bird sing; and thoughts raced through him with such speed that it seemed as if a high wind was whirling overhead.

  One day Charagu saw him gazing at a piece of bark covered with designs like those on the gechande, the rattle-gourd of a singer. He laughed and asked :

  “Do you wish to understand such things?”

  Karanja stared at him and said: “Yes.”

  “Then I am willing to teach you,” Charagu remarked, “in the evenings, when Marafu has eaten. But I cannot, of course, do this for nothing. You must pay me half your wages.”

  Karanja agreed at once. He had no use for his shillings; there was nothing that he wanted to buy. Charagu gave him a stick and a piece of bark and taught him at night, when he had nothing better to do, by the light of the kitchen lamp. Karanja discovered that words could be broken into many small pieces, like grains of maize ground between stones, and that each fragment had a different shape and could be drawn. Laboriously and wonderingly he learnt the shape of each sound, and how to mix them together to make simple words. So the miracle of transforming sounds into sights was gradually revealed to him. For a long time he could not control the pencil, nor understand how the sounds of the many symbols could be bound together into one word. But after his lesson he would walk home under a brilliant moon or a great sheet of milk-white stars, more than a little afraid of leopards in the dark bush, his head dizzy with sleep but his heart filled with the glory of his own knowledge. His mother chided him a little for being out so late, and his father ignored him. But he was indifferent to their censure; for he, a boy, already understood a great magic, of which they, his elders, were ignorant.

  7

  WHEN Karanja had been with Marafu for two years, his father decided to have him circumcised. The ceremony was held on the farm next to Marafu’s, where Matu had found a fig-tree near the river. A skilled circumciser was sent for from Kiambu and permission obtained from Marafu to brew much honey-beer. The candidates painted their legs and chests with lime but refused to rub themselves with ochre and fat because they said it was dirty. Kagama (who had been elected mathanjiku in charge of events) and the other elders were upset at this breach of custom, but they could not say anything. All young men now cropped their hair, like Europeans, and were even ceasing to have their ears pierced and to wear ornaments in the lobes. But in all important respects the full details of the ceremony were carried out, and Matu paid his fee to the council and was initiated into the secrets of elders of the third grade.

  For fourteen days before the ceremony Karanja attended dances held every night on different farms along the Mau. The elders, combining together, bought an ox from Marafu, which the youths roasted and ate. When the day came Karanja was the best-dressed candidate of all. He had collected, at various times, much finery for the occasion, but of a different kind from that which his father had used. He wore a bright-striped European jersey, and two stiff white collars in place of Colobus skins around his wrists. His legs were swathed in rattles made of small cans filled with stones. In his ears he wore yellow cigarette tins and he carried a bright malacca cane. He had also given presents to his sister Wamboi, who was circumcised on the same day. She wore a purple veil across her body draped with strings of cowrie shells, and European women’s stockings wound around her head; and she carried proudly in her hand something that no one else had got: an open umbrella. The name given to the age was Gechande, in honour of a troubadour who went up and down the Kikuyu country at this season with his rattle-gourd singing a lewd but highly entertaining song.

  Karanja had grown into a tall, willowy youth with long, straight legs and a light skin that came to him with his Masai blood. His face was alert and quick to change expression, and his observant eyes missed little. He knew that his good features and his skill at the dance caused the girls to glance at him with long, soft looks and to address him in high, rippling voices. Nor was his agile mind slow to invent neatly-phrased and pointed songs with which to lead the chorus. One of the youths of his age-grade grew jealous; Karanja, he said, deceived the girls with boasting lies and was at heart a coward. Karanja knew this to be untrue. He was not afraid to eat European food, to drink their strange medicines, to use a latrine or to approach a horse, all things which his father, even now, could not have brought himself to do. He laughed at his circumcision-brother and said : “Do girls seek out a coward? If the Masai came as they used to I would slay ten warriors single-handed.” He was glad, however, that there were no Masai to slay.

  8

  AFTER Karanja’s wounds were healed his father suggested that he should work for Marafu to earn his own tax, for which he would now be liable. But Karanja refused. A restlessness was on him. His feet itched to feel the dust of unknown paths, his eyes to gaze upon new things and the faces of strange people.

  “Now I have become like a python in a pool,” he said to his father. “The river flows down from above, but where does it come from ? And it hurries on below, yet I do not know where it is going. For a year I shall do no work, but I shall walk about the world to seek its beginning and its end and to find out about all the people who are in it.”

  Matu disliked this talk, but he did not protest. Instead, he gave his son powerful charms to guide
his feet in safety and to avert lions and rhinos. “Go, if you must,” he said, “and go in peace; and may God guide your feet back to this homestead.”

  Karanja took as his companion on his journey a young man of his own circumcision-age called Karioki. He was a strong, thick-featured youth, with a ready smile and an even readier temper. By nature he was obstinate, and quicker to justify a breach of manners than to show regret. He was lazy, too, and preferred to gossip and crack jokes with his fellows in the shade than to attend to his father’s goats or help his mother cultivate. Whenever his father asked a near kinsman to reprimand him he would grow sulky, and disappear for several days together. But he was liked by other boys for his lively tongue and his ability to tell a story. The girls liked him too, although not as much as he believed they did, for he was very vain of his appearance.

  After his circumcision he wandered, with his friend Karanja, over many European farms, dancing and singing every night. But then his father was called to work for Marafu and asked Karioki to tend the goats. Karioki looked sullen and made no reply. The next morning he disappeared. His father was shaken with a deep anger at this undutiful behaviour.

  “Tell Karioki that he is my son no longer !” he exclaimed in his rage. “Only when he brings a ram in token of repentance will I forgive him, or consider the payment of bride-price for whatever girl he desires as wife!”

  The elder did not doubt that these bitter words would bring Karioki back at once; but Matu, whose thoughts were deep, shook his head.

  “Life is no longer the same,” he said. “In your youth and mine we could not have insulted our fathers; we feared the anger of the elders, and only our fathers could provide us with wives. But now Europeans teach their magic to children, so that uncircumcised boys are like elders, and elders like infants in arms. Your son Karioki, and my son Karanja—can they not go to work for Europeans and thus themselves find shillings to buy goats to pay for their brides?”

  Matu, it proved was right: Karioki did not return to his father. Instead, he disappeared with Karanja, his friend, in search of the beginning and the end of the world. They walked away together one morning in their clean new shorts and shirts, their only luggage a light stick held as their ancestors had clasped the spear. It was a year before Matu saw his son again.

  CHAPTER II

  Pig’s Meat

  I

  KARANJA and Karioki visited many places together, receiving hospitality wherever they went from women with sons of the age-grade Gechande, young men who were as brothers to themselves.

  They went first to Elburgon, a land of tall, sweet-smelling cedars and deep-grassed glades. Here they saw an engine that chattered all day and a bright whirring wheel that bit into the red cedar trunks with a high scream of anger like many swarms of bees. They watched with awe as the great trunks fell apart and were carved into sections, as a man might slice a banana with his knife. Kikuyu like themselves were tending the savage tree-eater; but the cry of the great knife was disturbing and the nights were cold and spirit-haunted. Karanja and Karioki were uneasy, and they continued along the road.

  They passed over a land of wild, wind-swept pastures bounded by abrupt black walls of forest, a country of horizons curved as gently as if the earth had become the body of a sleeping girl. But the winds were cold, the air light as a petal, and they walked on until they came to a land of smooth, tumbling hills, steeped in brilliant green, that lay beyond. Here, when the sun dropped half-way down the sky, a purple storm rolled out of the west, swiftly as a flight of cranes, and flung itself against the hills. At sunset the travellers looked in vain for the friendly shape of a Kikuyu hut. Strange men with long hair dressed like Masai passed them on the road. They carried spears, and gazed before them with the proud, hostile eye of hawks. These men, they knew, were Nandi, a savage race of greater ferocity even than the Masai. They trudged on wearily under a web of stars until they reached a cluster of lights centring around a station on the railway line. Here, at last, they found men of their own race, and were given shelter and food.

  That evening, in the far distance, they had glimpsed the shining waters of a great lake; another world lay below their questing feet. But the next morning they turned and retraced their path. That world was full of hostile people who would not give them food; it was best left unexplored.

  2

  AT Londiani, on the homeward path, they met a European who offered them work. He had three long wagons and three teams of oxen, and he wished to carry many wooden cases to a distant place called Eldoret. Karanja and Karioki told him that they were experienced in the work of driving oxen. As soon as they had started, the European, who was of a different tribe to Marafu, saw that they could not wield the heavy, long-thonged whips, and was very angry; but when he had finished shouting at them he agreed to teach them the work. They found it difficult, and repeatedly wound the thongs of the whips around themselves as if they had been insects in cocoons. Slowly they learnt to crack the whip with the noise of a snapping branch, to call each ox by name in a voice which compelled it to obey, and to know at once when an animal used cunning to keep its harness taut but to withhold its full weight.

  Every morning they yoked the oxen as dawn broke and walked beside them swinging their whips until the sun was high. They rested in the afternoon, whilst the outspanned oxen munched grass amid a cloak of flies. Again through the evening they took the rutted road. White dust hung above them by day, but towards evening it turned golden in the sun and a bright halo enveloped them as they lumbered onwards to the north.

  At night they chopped thorn branches to make a low boma for the oxen and cooked their evening meal under the stars. The European shared their food, and later rolled up in his blankets beside them underneath the wagons. They themselves talked of many things, often telling stories and riddles until the night was half over. One evening Karanja told his companions this tale:

  “There was once a very old man who went on a long journey. He was so old that he could not walk, so he told his four sons to carry him on their shoulders. The sons did so, but the path was rough and the old man was so jolted and bumped about that he complained loudly, groaning and crying out in a high voice: ‘You are hurting me, do not go so fast.’ But the sons paid no attention.

  “Presently he saw that there were many brown objects moving along in front. They, too, were travelling across the plain, and they always kept the same distance away. He said to his sons: ‘Why do you follow these ogres ? I believe you are taking me to a place where you can kill me.’ But the sons went on carrying him, and one answered: ‘It is all right, they are only rocks that are rolling away.’

  “Then he noticed that beyond the rocks was a black object moving in front of him across the plain. He cried out again, saying: ‘Why do you follow that black object, I believe it must be the devil!’ But the sons said: ‘It is all right, that is only a carrion crow.’

  “The old man groaned again, and then he heard a loud noise in the air repeated many times. He cried out in a high voice to his sons: ‘Put me down, I am frightened, there are spirits in the air coming to kill me.’ But the sons went on carrying him and said: ‘It is all right, the noise is made by a blacksmith shaping a knife on his anvil.’

  “That night when they stopped to rest the old man was very frightened, so in the night he called on a spirit to put a lot of big stones on the path. The next morning when they started off one of the sons fell over a stone and was killed. The others said: ‘No matter, we will go on, and three of us will carry him.’ But the old man was heavy, he was jolted more than ever before. Presently another son fell over a stone and was killed also. This happened to all four sons, and when they were dead the old man lay helpless in the road.

  “Then a European came along and saw him and said: ‘What is this useless old man doing here ? He cannot carry a load, he is no good to anyone; we will take all his skins and ornaments away.’ So they left him naked, and very soon he died, for there was no one to carry him to the end of hi
s journey. Now, what is the answer to this riddle ?”

  Karanja’s companions laughed and one said: “I can tell you the answer. The old man is the wagon, and his sons are the wheels. The rocks are the oxen that walk ahead, the bird is the boy Karoma who leads the oxen, and the blows of the smith are the sounds of the long whips. The old man groans and squeaks a great deal, but all the same he cannot go forward without his sons, the wheels, to carry him. If they are broken he will lie helpless by the side of the road and a European will come and take away everything in the wagon.”

  “That is the right answer,” Karanja said.

  3

  ELDORET lay beyond a broad plain bare of trees or rivers, and they were glad to reach their journey’s end. They took their wages and refused to continue, and they found themselves alone in a strange land.

  Eldoret was a disappointment. It was true that there were many Indian shops full of alluring goods, a few crowded eating-houses, and a place where for a few cents they could buy mugs of beer; but they could find no youths of their age-grade, no dances, and no girls of their own race. They met a man of their tribal group who gave them a bed in a small house of mud, but it was full of lice, and cold, for there was no fire.