Kirinyaga

by Mike Resnick

  The Maasai himself was seated on a tall chair, taller even than Koinnage's throne. In one hand he held a gourd of pombe, and the leather case that held his rifle was laid carefully across his lap. He was clad now in the red robe of his people, his hair was neatly braided in his tribal fashion, and his lean body glistened with oils that had been rubbed onto it. Two young girls, scarcely past circumcision age, stood behind him, hanging upon his every word.

  “fambo, old man!” he greeted me as I approached him.

  “fambo, Sambeke,” I said.

  “That is no longer my name,” he said.

  “Oh? And have you taken a Kikuyu name instead?”

  “I have taken a name that the Kikuyu will understand,” he replied. “It is what the village will call me from this day forth.”

  “You are not leaving, now that the hunt is over?”

  He shook his head. “I am not leaving.”

  “You are making a mistake,” I said.

  “Not as big a mistake as you made when you chose not to be my ally,” he responded. Then, after a brief pause, he smiled and added: “Do you not wish to know my new name?”

  “I suppose I should know it, if you are to remain here for any length of time,” I agreed.

  He leaned over and whispered the name word to me that Ngai had whispered to Gikuyu on the holy mountain millions of years earlier.

  “Bwana?” I repeated.

  He looked smugly at me, and smiled again. “Now,” he said, “it is Utopia.”

  Bwana spent the next few weeks making Kirinyaga a Utopia—for Bwana.

  He took three young wives for himself, and he had the villagers build him a large house by the river, a house with windows and corners and verandas such as the colonial Europeans might have built in Kenya two centuries earlier.

  He went hunting every day, collecting trophies for himself and providing the village with more meat than they had ever had before. At nights he went to the village to eat and drink and dance, and then, armed with his rifle, he walked through the darkness to his own house.

  Soon Koinnage was making plans to build a house similar to Bwana's, right in the village, and many of the young men wanted the Maasai to procure rifles for them. This he refused to do, explaining that there could be only one Bwana on Kirinyaga, and it was their job to serve as trackers and cooks and skinners.

  He no longer wore European clothes, but always appeared in traditional Maasai dress, his hair meticulously pleated and braided, his body bright and glistening from the oils that his wives rubbed on him each night.

  I kept my own counsel and continued my duties, caring for the sick, bringing the rains, reading the entrails of goats, blessing the scarecrows, alleviating curses. But I did not say another word to Bwana, nor did he speak to me.

  Ndemi spent more and more time with me, tending my goats and chickens, and even keeping my boma clean, which is woman's work but which he volunteered to do.

  Finally one day he approached me while I sat in the shade, watching the cattle grazing in a nearby field.

  “May I speak, mundumugu}” he asked, squatting down next to me.

  “You may speak, Ndemi,” I answered.

  “The Maasai has taken another wife,” he said. “And he killed Karanja's dog because its barking annoyed him.” He paused. “And he calls everyone ‘Boy’ even the Elders, which seems to me to be a term of disrespect.”

  “I know these things,” I said.

  “Why do you not do something, then?” asked Ndemi. “Are you not all-powerful?”

  “Only Ngai is all-powerful,” I said. “I am just the mundumugu.”

  “But is not the mundumugu more powerful than a Maasai?”

  “Most of the people in the village do not seem to think so,” I said.

  “Ah!” he said. “You are angry with them for losing faith in you, and that is why you have not turned him into an insect and stepped on him.”

  “I am not angry,” I said. “Merely disappointed.”

  “When will you kill him?” asked Ndemi.

  “It would do no good to kill him,” I replied.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they believe in his power, and if he died, they would just send for another hunter, who would become another Bwana.”

  “Then will you do nothing?”

  “I will do something,” I answered. “But killing Bwana is not the answer. He must be humiliated before the people, so that they can see for themselves that he is not, after all, a mundumugu who must be listened to and obeyed.”

  “How will you do this?” asked Ndemi anxiously.

  “I do not know yet,” I said. “I must study him further.”

  “I thought you knew everything already.”

  I smiled. “The mundumugu does not know everything, nor does he have to.”

  “Oh?”

  “He must merely know more than his people.”

  “But you already know more than Koinnage and the others.”

  “I must be sure I know more than the Maasai before I act,” I said.

  “You may know how large the leopard is, and how strong, and how fast, and how cunning—but until you have studied him further, and learned how he charges, and which side he favors, and how he tests the wind, and how he signals an attack by moving his tail, you are at a disadvantage if you hunt him. I am an old man, and I cannot defeat the Maasai in hand-to-hand combat, so I must study him and discover his weakness.”

  “And what if he has none?”

  “Everything has a weakness.”

  “Even though he is stronger than you?”

  “The elephant is the strongest beast of all, and yet a handful of tiny ants inside his trunk can drive him mad with pain to the point where he will kill himself.” I paused. “You do not have to be stronger than your opponent, for surely the ant is not stronger than the elephant. But the ant knows the elephant's weakness, and I must learn the Maasai's.”

  He placed his hand to his chest.

  “I believe in you, Koriba,” he said.

  “I am glad,” I said, shielding my eyes as a hot breeze blew a cloud of dust across my hill. “For you alone will not be disappointed when I finally confront the Maasai.”

  “Will you forgive the men of the village?” he asked.

  I paused before answering. “When they remember once more why we came to Kirinyaga, I will forgive them,” I said at last.

  “And if they do not remember?”

  “I must make them remember,” I said. I looked out across the savannah, following its contours as it led up the river and the woods. “Ngai has given the Kikuyu a second chance at Utopia, and we must not squander it.”

  “You and Koinnage, and even the Maasai, keep using that word, but I do not understand it.”

  “Utopia?” I asked.

  He nodded. “What does it mean?”

  “It means many things to many people,” I replied. “To the true Kikuyu, it means to live as one with the land, to respect the ancient laws and rituals, and to please Ngai.”

  “That seems simple enough.”

  “It does, doesn't it?” I agreed. “And yet you cannot begin to imagine how many millions of men have died because their definition of Utopia differed from their neighbor's.”

  He stared at me. “Truly?”

  “Truly. Take the Maasai, for example. His Utopia is to ride upon his sedan chair, and to shoot animals, and to take many wives, and to live in a big house by the river.”

  “It does not sound like a bad thing,” observed Ndemi thoughtfully.

  “It is not a bad thing—for the Maasai.” I paused briefly. “But do you suppose it is Utopia for the men who must carry the chair, or the animals that he kills, or the young men of the village who cannot marry, or the Kikuyu who must build his house by the river?”

  “I see,” said Ndemi, his eyes widening. “Kirinyaga must be a Utopia for all of us, or it cannot be a Utopia at all.” He brushed an insect from his cheek and looked at me. “Is that correct
, Koriba?”

  “You learn quickly, Ndemi,” I said, reaching a hand out and rubbing the hair atop his head. “Perhaps some day you yourself will become a mundumugu.”

  “Will I learn magic then?”

  “You must learn many things to be a mundumugu” I said. “Magic is the least of them.”

  “But it is the most impressive,” he said. “It is what makes the people fear you, and fearing you, they are willing to listen to your wisdom.”

  As I considered his words, I finally began to get an inkling of how I would defeat Bwana and return my people to the Utopian existence that we had envisioned when we accepted our charter for Kirinyaga.

  “Sheep!” growled Bwana. “All sheep! No wonder the Maasai preyed on the Kikuyu in the old days.”

  I had decided to enter the village at night, to further observe my enemy. He had drunk much pombe, and finally stripped off his red cloak and stood naked before Koinnage's bomay challenging the young men of the village to wrestle him. They stood back in the shadows, shaking like women, in awe of his physical prowess.

  “I will fight three of you at once!” he said, looking around for any volunteers. There were none, and he threw back his head and laughed heartily

  “And you wonder why I am Bwana and you are a bunch of boys!”

  Suddenly his eyes fell on me.

  “ There is a man who is not afraid of me,” he announced.

  “That is true,” I said.

  “Willyou wrestle me, old man?”

  I shook my head. “No, I will not.”

  “I guess you are just another coward.”

  “I do not fear the buffalo or the hyena, but I do not wrestle with them, either,” I said. “There is a difference between courage and foolishness. You are a young man; I am an old one.”

  “What brings you to the village at night?” he asked. “Have you been speaking to your gods, plotting ways to kill me?”

  “There is only one god,” I replied, “and He disapproves of killing.”

  He nodded, an amused smile on his face. “Yes, it stands to reason that the god of sheep would disapprove of killing.” Suddenly the smile vanished, and he stared contemptuously at me. “En-kai spits upon your god, old man.”

  “You call Him En-kai and we call him Ngai,” I said calmly, “but it is the same god, and the day will come when we all must answer to Him. I hope you will be as bold and fearless then as you are now.”

  “I hope your Ngai will not tremble before me? he retorted, posturing before his wives, who giggled at his arrogance. “Did I not go naked into the night, armed with only a spear, and slay fisi? Have I not killed more than one hundred beasts in less than thirty days? Your Ngai had better not test my temper.”

  “He will test more than your temper,” I replied.

  “What does rtomean?”

  “It means whatever you wish it to mean,” I said. “I am old and tired, and I wish to sit by the fire and drink pombe?

  With that I turned my back on him and walked over to Njobe, who was warming his ancient bones by a small fire just outside Koin-nage's boma.

  Unable to find an opponent with whom to wrestle, Bwana drank more pombe and finally turned to his wives.

  “No one will fight me,” he said with mock misery “And yet my fighting blood is boiling within my veins. Set me a task—any task— that I may do for your pleasure.”

  The three girls whispered together and giggled again, and finally one of them stepped forward, urged by the other two.

  “We have seen Koriba place his hand in the fire without being burned,” she said. “Can you do that?”

  He snorted contemptuously. “A magician's trick, nothing more. Set me a true task.”

  “Set him an easier xask? I said. “Obviously the fire is too painful.”

  He turned and glared at me. “What kind of lotion did you place on your hand before putting it in the fire, old man?” he asked in English.

  I smiled at him. “That would be an illusionists trick, not a magician's,” I answered.

  “You think to humiliate me before my people?” he said. “Think again, old man.”

  He walked to the fire, stood between Njobe and myself, and thrust his hand into it. His face was totally impassive, but I could smell the burning flesh. Finally he withdrew it and held it up.

  “There is no magic to it!” he shouted in Swahili.

  “But you are burned, my husband,” said the wife who had challenged him.

  “Did I cry out?” he demanded. “Did I cringe from pain?”

  “No, you did not.”

  “Can any other man place his hand in the fire without crying out?”

  “No, my husband.”

  “Who, then, is the greater man—Koriba, who protects himself with magic, or I, who need no magic to place my hand in the fire?”

  “Bwana,” said his wives in unison.

  He turned to me and grinned triumphantly.

  “You have lost again, old man.”

  But I had not lost.

  I had gone to the village to study my enemy, and I had learned much from my visit. Just as a Kikuyu cannot become a Maasai, this Maasai could not become a Kikuyu. There was an arrogance that had been bred into him, an arrogance so great that it had not only elevated him to his current high status, but would prove to be his downfall as well.

  The next morning Koinnage himself came to my boma.

  “fambo,” I greeted him.

  “fambo, Koriba,” he replied. “We must talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About Bwana,” said Koinnage.

  “What about him?”

  “He has overstepped himself,” said Koinnage. “Last night, after you left, he decided that he had drunk too much pombe to return home, and he threw me out of my own hut—me, the paramount chief!” He paused to kick at a small lizard that had been approaching his foot, and then continued. “Not only that, but this morning he announced that he was taking my youngest wife, Kibo, for his own!”

  “Interesting,” I remarked, watching the tiny lizard as it scurried under a bush, then turned and stared at us.

  “Is that all you can say?” he demanded. “I paid twenty cows and five goats for her. When I told him that, do you know what he did?”

  “What?”

  Koinnage held up a small silver coin for me to see. “He gave me a shilling from Kenya!” He spat upon the coin and threw it onto the dry, rocky slope beyond my boma. “And now he says that whenever he stays in the village he will sleep in my hut, and that I must sleep elsewhere.”

  “I am very sorry,” I said. “But I warned you against sending for a hunter. It is his nature to prey upon all things: the hyena, the kudu, even the Kikuyu.” I paused, enjoying his discomfort. “Perhaps you should tell him to go away.”

  “He would not listen.”

  I nodded. “The lion may sleep with the goat, and he may feed upon him, but he very rarely listens to him.”

  “Koriba, we were wrong,” said Koinnage, his face a mask of desperation. “Can you not rid us of this intruder?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I have already told you.”

  I shook my head slowly. “You have told me why you have cause to resent him,” I answered. “That is not enough.”

  “What more must I say?” asked Koinnage.

  I paused and looked at him. “It will come to you in the fullness of time.”

  “Perhaps we can contact Maintenance,” suggested Koinnage. “Surely they have the power to make him leave.”

  I sighed deeply. “Have you learned nothing?”

  “I do not understand.”

  “You sent for the Maasai because he was stronger than fisi. Now you want to send for Maintenance because they are stronger than the Maasai. If one man can so change our society, what do you think will happen when we invite many men? Already our young men talk of hunting instead of farming, and wish to build European houses with corners where demons can hide, and beg the Maasai to suppl
y them with guns. What will they want when they have seen all the wonders that Maintenance possesses?”

  “Then how are we to rid ourselves of the Maasai?”

  “When the time comes, he will leave,” I said.

  “Yon are certain?”

  “I am the mundumugu”

  “When will this time be?” asked Koinnage.

  “When yon know why he must leave,” I answered. “Now perhaps you should return to the village, lest you discover that he wants your other wives as well.”

  Panic spread across Koinnage's face, and he raced back down the winding trail to the village without another word.

  I spent the next few days gathering bark from some of the trees at the edge of the savannah, and when I had gathered as much as I needed I added certain herbs and roots and mashed them to a pulp in an old turtle shell. I added some water, placed it in a cooking gourd, and began simmering the concoction over a small fire.

  When I was done I sent for Ndemi, who arrived about half an hour later.

  “fambo, Koriba,” he said.

  “Jatnbo, Ndemi,” I replied.

  He looked at my cooking gourd and wrinkled his nose. “What is that?” he asked. “It smells terrible.”

  “It is not for eating,” I replied.

  “I hope not,” he said devoutly.

  “Be careful not to touch it,” I said, walking over to the tree that grew within my boma and sitting down in its shade. Ndemi, giving the gourd a wide birth, joined me.

  “You sent for me,” he said.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I am glad. The village is not a good place to be.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded. “A number of the young men now follow Bwana everywhere. They take goats from the shambas and cloth from the huts, and nobody dares to stop them. Kanjara tried yesterday, but the young men hit him and made his mouth bleed while Bwana watched and laughed.”

  I nodded, for none of this surprised me.

  “I think it is almost time,” I said, waving my hand to scare away some flies that also sought shade beneath the tree and were buzzing about my face.