Matu took a pinch of snuff and watched his wife stirring the pot. “It is true,” he said. “Youths who have been educated walk by one path, and we who are old by another, and the paths do not meet. Nowadays young men can grow richer than elders, yet they are not content. They no longer put on fine ornaments and dance all night as we did. Nor are they called upon to fight. All is ease for the young men to-day, yet when have you seen Kaleo laugh and sing as I used to when I was a youth? But it is the path he has chosen, and he must find out where it leads. I will sell a cow, and he shall return to school and learn how to become a teacher or a clerk.”
Kaleo was delighted when he heard this. But he did not sing or dance, and he avoided the company of many youths of his age because they were uneducated, sinful and dirty. As soon as his wounds were healed he returned to Kijabe, taking the money in a bag, and Matu never saw him again.
4
THE drought continued long into the season when rain should have fallen, and day succeeded hot, sun-flooded day like ripe fruit falling at unhurried intervals from the tree of time. The eye of heaven, unlidded by softening clouds, glared with a fierce persistency over the red earth. The lake in the valley shrank into itself, leaving a broad white ring of soda around its edges; no one could remember when it had been so low. The locust-eaten pastures peeled like dead bark to disclose grey powdered earth, and dust-devils whirled across the valley like dancers run wild. The flesh of cattle fell away from their bones, and the milk of cows ran dry. At night the stars swam so close to the earth that it seemed as if a man could shake the darkness with an outstretched hand and bring them tumbling from the branches of the night. Matu, looking upwards, said: “Now it seems that the skies are like the breast of a very old woman, shrivelled and dry. Why does God not fill them with milk to nourish the earth ?”
Karanja could see that Marafu was growing very sad. His new cows, for all their strength and size, gave little milk because of the dry pastures, but all the time they had to be fed with green crops grown by the river bank. Marafu watched their fat dwindle with a morose eye. He had a fine big bull, exceedingly strong and savage, but although it was kept in a house especially built for it, where no ticks could penetrate, one day it fell ill and died.
Marafu went to Nairobi several times, but no longer to attend European beer-parties and dances as he had done in the days before the locusts came. He left his wife behind and took Karanja, who spent many hours sitting in the car outside the bank and other offices. Nairobi had swollen like a tick on the neck of a cow and the houses had grown upwards as quickly as eucalyptus trees. Everyone now was well-dressed, and many people went about in buses. A great hall, like a European club, had been built near the house where Karanja had lived, and in it dances were sometimes held at night. These were not in the least like the old-fashioned dances, however, which Christians said were wicked; they were exactly like the dances held by the Europeans in their big hotels a mile away. Karanja attended such a dance one evening and found that all the girls dressed like European women, with shiny stockings on their legs. Karanja learnt that he could hire a black evening suit such as Marafu wore on special occasions for two shillings. Everyone danced in couples, the men holding the women in the indecently intimate way of Europeans, and ate European food.
After they had returned home Marafu sent for Karanja and said : “All my shillings are finished. I have no more money to pay the men. I cannot stay here any longer, since I do not receive as much for my maize and milk as I have to pay out in wages and food, and this shamba no longer belongs to me, but to the bank. Therefore in one month’s time I and my wife and children must leave Njoro altogether. I am going to a place called Kakamega, to dig something out of the ground.”
“But what will become of us?” asked Karanja in alarm.
“Another European will look after this shamba. My cows I shall sell. One day, if I can find wealth in the ground, perhaps I shall be able to return. I do not know; it is the affair of God. Any of you who wish may return to Kikuyu, but if you stay perhaps this new European will give you work.”
“Bwana,” Karanja said, after a pause, “I do not wish to work for another European. It is now eight years that I have been with you, and I know your customs, and everything that you demand. How do I know that a new European would treat me well? I should like to go with you, and continue to be your servant.”
“Thank you, Karanja,” Marafu said. “But what would you do with your wife ? No one is allowed to cultivate a shamba on this land unless he works on the farm; that is the Serkali’s law.”
“I do not want to leave here,” Karanja said. “The land is fat, and my wife has a good shamba. Besides, where would she go?”
“Then you will have to stay,” Marafu said, “and work for the new European.”
5
KARANJA was deeply perturbed at the upheaval, as indeed were all those who lived on Marafu’s farm. It had never occurred to them that their European could go. They had complained often of his behaviour—and especially of his unaccountable refusal to let them cut down trees—but now that he was going they were afraid. A way of life had been built and now it was to be broken, like a hut in which someone had died.
Gradually the shamba withered before their eyes like a plucked flower. The big cows went away to be sold. The tractor, also, was driven off and did not return. Weeds sprang up in the shamba and were not removed. The furniture of the house was packed up and taken on wagons to the station.
A morning came when Karanja helped Marafu to pile boxes containing many of his possessions into his car, ready for a long journey. Everyone had come to see him leave and to receive farewell presents of blankets and coats.
Matu had decided to give Marafu a present, and had given much thought to its selection. A fat ram, he knew, would not be appreciated by a European. At last he remembered that Marafu had once admired the three-legged stool that hung from a chain around his neck. Matu had brought this with him from his clan’s ridge many years before. Its surface was worn as smooth as a grinding-stone and blackened with the smoke of many fires. He did not want to part with it, for it had been with him since he was a young man; but he could not let Marafu go without any present at all
“Marafu has been a good European,” he said. “He has stood between me and the Serkali, and has given grazing to my goats. Let him take the stool, for I shall not need it much longer.”
When Marafu saw it he shook Matu’s hand and said: “I shall not forget you. One day when everything has become better, as it may, I shall return. Do not get drunk too often, and be careful that the European on the next farm does not find the goats that I told you to sell, but that you have hidden there.”
Karanja saw that Marafu’s wife was crying, so he said: “We will look after the farm when you have gone. As soon as you have obtained more shillings you must come back, and you will find things as you left them here.”
With that Marafu waved and many people pushed the car from behind, for it was too old to start on its own. There was a loud shout of farewell, and the elders cried after him : “Go in peace.” Marafu waved his hand; and, amid a great noise from the car, he drove away.
6
HIS departure brought evil fortune to the shamba. Soon afterwards disasters fell like hailstones on to Matu’s head. He had arranged for those of his goats which had been dismissed to be grazed on the farm adjoining, where several friends lived. He heard one day that they had been discovered by the European, who had ordered them off the farm immediately and said that a fine of ten shillings must be paid. Then the new European arrived with an officer of the Serkali. He announced at a public meeting that work could not be found for everyone, and that many of the people living on the shamba would have to go.
The European then delivered the worst blow of all: he proclaimed the expulsion of all goats on the farm.
At first no one could believe such words. “Ten goats for each wife,” they said, “these, surely, may be kept.”
“No,�
� the European answered. “All goats, all, must go.”
“Five goats, then,” the elders pleaded. “Five for each wife; surely this must be allowed.”
“No,” the European repeated. “Can you not see that your goats are eating everything on the shamba, that they are spoiling the land ? If you will not agree, you may go back to Kikuyu, and take your goats too.”
The elders stared at the ground in a hopeless silence. They were too old to go. They did not know where they would send their wealth. The younger men, however, said nothing, because they did not so greatly care. It was possible, now, to buy brides for cash. No educated man believed any longer in sacrifices and few would agree to be purified of a thahu, or even after a death. Life without goats, therefore, was becoming feasible; it was better to spend money on bicycles, clothes, and meat or tea.
Matu returned despondently to his homestead. He did not know where to send his goats.
“The time has come,” Karanja said to him that night, “to return to the land of our own clan. Perhaps your uncle Ngarariga, or your brother Muthengi, will look after the goats.”
“I have told you often that Muthengi will poison me if I return,” Matu said.
“You have told it to me often, but it is no longer true,” Karanja replied. “Muthengi would not dare to poison you now that he is an important chief. Have you thought what is to become of Kaleo when he marries ? He cannot get land here. He must be given the land that belongs to you, the shamba that you inherited from your father, or he will have nowhere to cultivate when he buys a wife.”
7
MATU’S legs, bent since childhood, had grown stiff, and often caused him pain. He walked with a staff’s aid, and now his face was lean and lined. In spite of his stiffness he still travelled long distances with his bag of medicines to purify elders who contracted a thahu or fell sick. But few of the young men would agree to vomit out evil any more. They said that the taste revolted them, and went instead to the hospital in Nakuru if they were ill. Sometimes they were cured, and sometimes not; Matu could not see that European magic was any more infallible than his own.
Wanja, too, looked old and worn. Her ear-lobes dangled loosely above her bony shoulders and her breasts were withered and dry. Most of her teeth had fallen out, and when she laughed her face dissolved into an immense number of lines and crevices, crinkled as an elephant’s foot.
At the time of Matu’s worries she fell sick. Six goats were sacrificed, one by one, until Matu remarked in jest that the question of where to send his goats was being answered by God. Wanja lay quietly on her bed in the dark hut, suffering pain in silence as she had done many times before. Karanja wished to take her to the hospital, but she refused. He went into Nakuru himself to fetch some European medicine, but it did her no more good than his father’s remedies. Her strength left her gradually as a pond empties slowly before the sun; and early one morning, at sunrise, she died. Karanja and Matu dug a shallow grave and buried her without ceremony, her ornaments by her side. Afterwards Matu visited a mundu-mugu to be purified. Karanja said nothing, but refused to go.
When life left Wanja’s body something in Matu seemed to die too. He did not speak, but grief shook him as an old tree is shaken by a gale. He sat all day in the shade of the acacia that spread its green hands over the homestead. His two remaining wives offered him tempting hot meals, even bought millet at the market to make him gruel; but he would eat no more than the portion fit for a sparrow.
At last, when the maize crop was harvested, he sent for Karanja and said:
“Now I am old and have stiff legs, and one who cooked my food since I was a young man can no longer stir the pot. My goats also are to be taken away; I am like the rock left on the hillside after the gravel has been washed down. I do not wish to live any longer; and in three months I shall die.”
“No man can decide when to die,” Karanja said. “It is the affair of God.”
“I have decided, all the same. I have considered your words, that I should visit the country of my clan to claim my inheritance for my son Kaleo. Those words have wisdom; and I would like to see my brother before I die. Therefore we will go, as you have suggested; I shall be ready to start in eight days.”
“That is good,” Karanja replied.
CHAPTER VII
Return to Tetu
I
MATU and Karanja slept one night in Nairobi on the way. Karanja laughed at his father’s astonished comments and tried to take him in a big bus; but Matu refused.
“Only people with trousers are allowed,” he said. “I have no trousers, so I cannot go.” Karanja reassured him, but still he refused. He did not like to feel his shoulders and legs pressing against those of strangers: men of other races, of age-grades junior to his own, perhaps unclean persons, or even sorcerers.
When they were safely seated in the train that went to Nyeri, the name by which Tetu was now known, Karanja asked his father if he had liked Nairobi. Matu shook his head emphatically and said:
“No, it is a bad place.”
“Why?” Karanja enquired.
“Because the roads go in straight lines in both directions, and there are no corners. That is very bad indeed.”
They travelled all the morning through the red-soiled ridges of Kikuyu. Out of the window Matu, enthralled, saw women cultivating in the chequered shambas, carrying heavy bunches of bananas to market, shelling maize cobs outside their huts. Some straightened their backs and waved at the train, laughing and calling out remarks as it chugged slowly up the long hills and around steep curves into the valleys, and young men in the wagons waved back. At every station crowds of people greeted the train. Women, shouting continually in high voices, offered roast bananas, cooked yams and sugar-cane for sale. Men in European clothes swarmed over the platform, meeting friends or picking up scraps of news. Sometimes Matu saw an elder in a blanket and ear ornaments and called out a greeting, pleased to see another of his age-grade, and one clad as he was, amid so many well-dressed youths.
They arrived at Karatina in the heat of the afternoon. It was market day. People were gathered under the giant fig-tree where the market had always been held, but now many more were present; a brown sparkling wave of people was spread far and wide over the grass where often in olden times warriors had gathered for the ceremony that preceded a raid. The women seemed to throng the ground as thickly as a mass of ants swarming over a scrap of food. From the crowd arose a noise like the persistent chattering of flamingoes by a lake.
Matu stood still and watched, amazed. He did not know how so many women could exist at one time. The market was breaking up and they were dispersing in brown streams towards the hills. On their backs were loads of firewood, bananas, grain, and new-burnt pots: the same loads that his mother had carried a generation ago. But others had bottles of milk or melted fat in their hands. The men walked empty-handed (for none carried a spear) or else holding banana leaves pinned together with a wooden skewer, full of juicy meat. Elders returned with twists of snuff done up in dried banana leaf, but young men with packets of tea or cigarettes. Matu could see no lumps of iron, nor any sign of knives or ornaments offered by the smiths. He knew, indeed, that the fires of the smiths were cold, since there was no need of weapons, and smarter ornaments could be bought at Indian shops.
Far above the market, calm and light, the peak of Kerin-yagga stood out of the sky, its long shoulders cool and shrouded in a shell-white cloud. Matu looked up at it in thankfulness, for nothing about it had changed. Nor could he doubt, despite what Christians might say, that God still lived in the place of whiteness, far beyond reach of the market’s chatter or of the flight of the strongest bird.
2
KARANJA took his father to a small, tin-roofed house where they sat at a table and were given mugs of sweet tea. At the next table were two men in uniform, but not policemen; and Matu asked who they might be.
“They are two of the men who keep order in the market,” he was told. “They see that the maize is
dry and that only white grains are offered for sale. If the blue grains are mixed, as in the old days, they do not allow the women to sell their maize.”
“But it is not only white grains that are good to eat,” Matu exclaimed.
“Only white grains can be sold in the market, nevertheless. Women, also, must sort their beans into different kinds, according to size and colour.”
“I have never heard such a thing before,” Matu said, “but who can understand the Serkali’s ways?”
They asked where Muthengi lived, and were directed to his homestead. “There is a wide road all the way,” they were told, “which Muthengi built when he bought a motor-car.”
“Muthengi has a motor-car!” Matu exclaimed, unable to believe the man’s words.
“Certainly he has a motor-car; he comes in it to Karatina nearly every day to hear cases, for he is the senior elder of the council of law. His son Razimu drives him everywhere; did I not tell you that Muthengi is very rich?”
Matu was too overwhelmed to reply. He knew that no one would believe him if he proclaimed himself to be Muthengi’s brother. Even Karanja was a little awed at the affluence and importance of his uncle and the attainments of the cousins he had never met.
Everything that Matu saw by the roadside was familiar, and yet it was strange. The shapes of the hills, the curves of the sun-bright rivers, had not changed. Wydah-birds still agitated the reeds and women dug for arum roots in moist swampy earth. Higher up on the hillsides clusters of round huts were built in the same way among banana plantations and on the edges of open green flats where cattle grazed. Goat-bells still tinkled across rich valleys, and the warm herby scent of bush mingled with the smell of sunbaked earth as of old. All was familiar; yet differences sprang out on him at once. The shambas crowded thicker together than ever before and were full of beans, tall ripening maize and sweet potatoes; but nowhere was there any millet to be seen.
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