Just as he was about to open the gate, Matigari heard the sound of an engine. Next he saw headlamps. A Land-Rover stopped where they were. Two policemen jumped down, leaving another in the back, holding the leash of a dog.
‘Wapi ule mwivi? one of the two policemen asked,6
Robert Williams returned to the spot on horseback, Williams the white man and Boy the black man both pointed at Matigari. The police men jumped at Matigari and shone a torch in his face.
iNi ule mzee! Ni ule mzeeF one of them said. They were the same policemen Matigari had encountered earlier that afternoon.
‘Are you crazy or what?’ asked the one who had earlier harassed Guthera.
They lifted him bodily and flung him into the Land-Rover like a log. The dog growled ferociously and gnashed its teeth.
‘See you at the party,’John Boy and Robert Williams said as they parted.
The policemen drove away. Guthera and Muriuki emerged from their hide-out behind the bush.
13
Matigari was flung into a small dark cell which reeked with the breath of the ten other people packed there. The heavy odour of vomited beer, the smell of the sweat on their bodies and that of the human sweat and blood which had dried up on the walls of the cell over the years made it hard for him to breathe. He fought back with difficulty the nausea that seized him. The cell was silent but for the regular sound of a drunkard snoring as he lay in his own vomit.
One of the inmates began to shout, ‘Help! Who’s pissing?’ ‘It’s the drunkard!’ a number of voices answered together. The prisoners pushed into one another, trying to escape the jet of urine, but there was no space left into which they could move. Some made noises of disgust, and others shouted:
‘First he retches! Then he pisses!’
‘Now all that’s left for him to do is shit on us!’
‘Pinch him!’
‘Punch him!’
‘Wake up, wewe punda milia!7 One of them punched him. He woke up.
‘Why are you showering us with your urine?’
‘And farting like an old hog?’
‘Who me?’ the drunkard asked, still bemused with sleep and alcohol. ‘I was just helping God.’
‘To fart and vomit and urinate?’ another said.
‘I swear I was just helping God to mate it rain. Can’t you see how the drought has spread across the country? Just feel these walls or the floor, how parched they are. You see, as I stood by the road, all I could see on cither side was dry grass, dry weeds and dry trees. Then I asked myself: How come the whole country is so dry? I then thought: if I let one or three drops fall, the Almighty might have mercy and follow my example and let a bit of His pee fall to benefit us all in the country.’
‘So your vomit was some kind of sacrifice to God?’ one of them said, again sarcastically.
‘And your fart was no doubt the sound of thunder,’ echoed another.
‘Rain, rain, come today, so I may slaughter a calf for you. And another with a hump!’ somebody else sang.
Some laughed. But the majority were not at all amused, expressing their disgust in wordless noises. They now started talking among themselves.
‘You know, there is a grain of truth in what drunkards sometimes say,’
‘One can say that alcohol gives a person insight into things. Drunkards have a way of seeing things.’
‘That is very true, because what this drunkard has said is nothing but the truth. Our country is truly as dry as this concrete floor. Our leaders have hearts as cold as that of Pharaoh. Or even colder than those of the colonialists. They cannot hear the cry of the people.’
‘You have a point there. For one, can you tell me why I was arrested today?’
‘And what about me?1
They all forgot about the drunkard’s urine, and they began telling stories of their arrest. The way they talked they might have known one another for years.
One of them was a peasant farmer. He had been arrested for selling milk without a licence.
‘Just one bottle of milk, my friends! Just when I had bought some candles to take home, here they come with handcuffs: “Where is your permit?’”
Another had been arrested for stealing food from a restaurant.
‘What could I have done? I was famished, my friends.’
Yet another was accused of murdering a wealthy landowner who had failed to pay him his wages.
‘I hit him with a stick, and he fell down dead . . . but he had really provoked me. Just imagine your wife and children waiting for you to take some flour home and then you walk in empty-handed. And it is not as if you are begging. You are only demanding the wages you have worked for.’
A fourth had been arrested for vagrancy.
‘Have I turned down any job? Just imagine being arrested for vagrancy in your own country!’
Among them was a student who had been arrested for asking the Provincial Commissioner about the running of the country since independence.
‘And do you know what I asked him? “Why do you wear colonial uniforms?” Are they gods so that they may not be questioned? I say, where is democracy in this country? The Provincial Commissioner threatened; “You’ll have it rough, you university students. And you, chief, you have failed in your duties, or what is all this about, mere children yelling at adults in this manner?” So I am under the notorious Chiefs Act!
Another was a teacher who had been arrested and accused of teaching Marxism and communism in school.
‘Do you know what they based the allegations on? The fact that I stated that the political and economic systems of countries like the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and many other socialist countries are based on the teachings of Marx and Lenin. I have only one question. If I can’t teach the truth, what should I teach, then?’
The seventh man had been accused of having an intention to snatch a bourgeois woman’s purse.
‘I saw this wealthy woman unrolling a wad of hundred- shilling notes, and thought to myself: That money belongs to us, doesn’t it? I’ll help her spend it. So I followed her, and when she was about to get into her Mercedes, I, But how was I to know that there was a plain clothes policeman right next to me? They brought me in for being a pickpocket.’
The drunkard had been arrested simply for being drunk. ‘Can you tell me the logic of that?’ he asked. ‘If I don’t drink, what am I supposed to do with my life?’
By now only Matigari and two others present had not yet explained why they had been arrested.
‘It is true that our present leaders have no mercy,’ the peasant farmer added. ‘First they arrest us for no reason at all; then they bring us to a cell with no toilet facilities. So we end up pissing and shitting on one another!’
‘Even if there were toilets,’ the one accused of theft said, ‘I would have absolutely nothing to put in them. When was the last time I put a morsel into this belly?’
‘And what about me?’ asked the ‘pickpocket’. ‘I’m starving!’ I have often read in newspapers that they do feed people in prisons,’ the student now said.
‘Yes, when the Lord above wills it!’ the drunkard exclaimed. It was then that Matigari remembered that he still had his packed food and a bottle of beer.
‘I’ve a portion of food here, packed for me earlier in the day. I also have a bottle of beer. We can all share the food and have a sip of my beer. That way, we can keep hunger at bay for a while. It is not the quantity that counts but the act of sharing whatever we have. What did we use to sing?
Great love I sow there,
Among the women and the children.
When a bean fell,
We would share it among ourselves.
Our people, let us share this bean, and this drop of wine.’
Something in Matigari’s voice made them listen to him attentively. There was a sad note about it, but it also carried hope and courage. The others now fell silent. His words seemed to remind them of things long forgotten, carrying them back to dreams they had had long befo
re.
‘How are we going to see in this darkness?’ the ‘vagrant’ asked.
‘Finding your mouth can’t really be all that hard,’ the one accused of murder said.
‘A bit of food might fall into the urine,’ said the ‘pickpocket’.
‘Or in the vomit,’ the ‘thief added.
‘Then the vomit and piss will be our gravy,’ the student joked.
‘What are you saying?’ the ‘vagrant’ asked in disgust. ‘Don’t you know that you can make me sick?’
‘Or make us lose our appetites?’ the ‘pickpocket’ said.
‘That’s no problem. I can have your share,’ the ‘thief said,
‘Why, are you the ogre in the story who looked after the expectant woman and starved her?’ the ‘vagrant’ asked. ‘Or are you one of those ogres currently running the country?’
It was the peasant who came out with the answer to their problem.
‘I was arrested just as I came from buying candles,’ he said. ‘We can light one or two so that we can see while we eat. We don’t want to bite off our fingers. The only trouble is that I have no matches.’
‘I have a box of matches,’ said the teacher.
They lit two candles. They all peered at each other’s faces as if trying to find out who it was that had saved them from hunger. The shadows danced on their faces and on the wall. They all turned their eyes to Matigari.
Matigari took the food, broke it and gave it to them. They started eating. Then he took the bottle of beer, opened it with his teeth, poured a little of it on the floor in libation and gave them to drink and pass round.
When the drunkard’s turn came, he leaped to his feet, holding the food in his right hand and the bottle in his left, and started speaking as though he were reading the Bible from the pulpit.
‘And when the time for the supper came, he sat at the table together with his disciples. He told them: I want you to share this last supper with me, to remind us that we shall not be able to e"at together again unless our kingdom comes. And he took the bread and after breaking it he said: This is my body, which I give to you. Do this unto one another until the Second Coming. He then took the cup, and after blessing it he said: And this cup is a testament of the covenant we entered with one another with our blood. Do this to one another until our kingdom comes, through the will of the people!’
The man stopped speaking. Then he turned to Matigari: ‘Tell us the truth. Who are you? Because I have never heard of anyone ever being allowed to carry food or beer into the cell. I have been to prison countless times, and I swear that there’s never been a time when they don’t give us a thorough search . . . Our shoes, our money, everything is left at the entrance. What, then, happened today? No! I don’t believe it. Tell us the word! Give us the good tidings!’
He sat down. The men once again turned to Matigari, expecting something extraordinary to happen, for there was a grain of truth in what the drunkard had said. They had all been arrested on that day. But none of their things had been taken away from them. Matigari began speaking, like a father to his children.
‘I lived on a farm stolen from me by Settler Williams. I cleared the bush, tilled the soil, sowed the seeds and tended the crop. But what about the harvest? Everything went into Settler Williams’s stores, and I the tiller would be left looking for any grain that may have remained in the chaff. Settler Williams yawned because he was well fed. I yawned because I was hungry.
‘That was not all. I built the coffee factory and the tea- processing industries. You know those fruit-canning industries? I built them too and many others, I did it all with my own hands, yes, with these ten fingers you see here. But who reaped the profits? Settler Williams. And what of me? A cent was flung in my direction. The moment I got my meagre wages, who do you think was waiting for me at the gate but Settler Williams’s tax collectors? And if I failed to pay? Off to prison I went!
‘Don’t think that this was all, my friends! These hands of mine built a house. I the builder would sleep on the threshold or I would go begging for a place to lay my head. And all this while Settler Williams occupied the house that I had built! Tell me, is it fair that the tailor should go naked, the builder sleep in the open air and the tiller go hungry?
‘I revolted against this scheme of things.
‘I took the oath of patriotism and, one early morning, I went to Settler Williams and said: Pack your bags. Go build your own house. You have two hands just like I have. He refused to leave. He ran to the phone and I to the armoury. And who do you think it was that jumped on my back, screaming a warning to Settler Williams? None other than John Boy! I escaped through the window and ran up and down slopes. I ran through many valleys and disappeared into the mountains. Settler Williams and John Boy came after me. We spent many years hunting one another in every corner of the land. I first killed John Boy, It was only yesterday that I finally got Williams and stepped on his chest, holding up the weapons of victory. The battle won, I decided to come home and claim my house.
‘Our people! Would you believe it? Who do you think I met standing at the gate to my house? John Boy’s son, and Settler
Williams’s son! So it was Boy, son of Boy, who inherited the keys to my house! They blew the whistle, and the police came for me. Where is the justice in this, my friends?
‘Friends, you asked me a question, and I have answered it. That’s it. I’m here because, according to them, I don’t have the title-deed to my house. But tell me — what title-deed is greater than our sweat and blood? Whom do we turn to, we the patriots, we, Matigari ma Njiruungi!’
‘Matigari ma Njiruungi?’ the two men who had not yet spoken exclaimed together. ‘Was it you who stopped the police dogs from attacking a woman today?’
The others were startled out of the dreamland to which they had been transported by his story.
‘Are you the one of whom Ngaruro wa Kiriro spoke at the factory before the police began breaking workers’ limbs?’ said one of the two men who had spoken simultaneously.
‘Before the police broke people’s legs at the factory? When? Today?’ some asked, turning in the direction of the person who had come up with this news.
‘Haven’t you heard how the police beat the workers at the factory?’
‘You loo! Tell us your story.’
They sat up, their eyes now keenly glued to the man as he spoke.
‘I’m a worker,’ he began his tale. ‘I have worked with the company for ages, and the words Matigari has just spoken are absolutely true. I have been a servant to those machines all my life. Look at how the machines have sapped me of all strength. What is left of me? Just bones. My skin withered even as I kept on assuring myself: A fortune for him who works hard finally comes; a person who endures, finally overcomes. What can I now expect when I retire? Just a clock as a thank-you for long and loyal service. My fortune? Old age without a pension. Do you know something else? I spent all these years opposed to strikes. I kept on saying: If I go on strike and lose my job, what will my children eat tomorrow? But look at me. Here I am in prison for no reason whatsoever. What went wrong? Let me tell you.
‘Even today, this very day, I was walking along the road on my way home. I said to myself: Let me leave the strike to the foolish brave, listening to the experts like Ngaruro wa Kiriro. A man my age stopped and asked me: “Have you heard the news?” What news, other than the news of the strike? I said. And he answered me: “No, that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the patriots who went away. Listen! They have come back. Our children will come back.” What has happened? I asked him. “Can you believe this! He is a dwarf of a man. What did I say? A dwarf? When this dwarf stood up, wearing a feathered hat and a leopard-skin coat over his shoulder, he was transformed into a giant. I say again, a giant! He stood tall and strong and told the dog police: I am Matigari ma Njiruungi, and I warn you. Leave that woman alone! How can I describe it? His voice was like thunder. The dogs stopped with their tails in mid-air. Have you eve
r heard of such a thing?” Just as this man was telling me all this, I saw flames burst out in the factory compound and I knew that they were burning the effigies of Boy and Williams, The workers cheered. Then I heard Ngaruro wa Kiriro’s voice carried on the wind by the loudspeaker, Mark you, I only caught the last words: “Foreign exploiters and their local servants must now pack up their bags and go. The patriots, Matigari ma Njiruungi, are back, and the workers agree with Matigari’s call. He who sows must be the one who reaps! We refuse to be the pot that cooks but never eats the food!.”
‘Ngaruro wa Kiriro’s words made me happy. When I saw the effigies of Boy and Williams burning in the workers’ fire, I felt more than happy. I felt like weeping with joy. You see, I have worked in the factory for many years. I have seen French, German, Canadian and Italian directors come and go, but I have never seen worse directors than Boy and Williams. Boy is the worst of the two. He is like those dogs that are said to bark louder than their masters. He is really rude and arrogant. He claims that his shit never smells! Tell me, who wouldn’t rejoice at seeing the likes of those two burning eternally in hell? Our God will come back. Yes, the God of us workers will surely come back.
‘Just as I was thinking about Boy and Williams, I saw riot and mounted police encircle us. I abandoned the man of my age and his stories and I fled as fast as these old little legs could carry me. You might think that this is the first time that I have run away from a workers’ strike. No. I am a veteran at running away from the scene of a workers’ strike. The workers were fleeing in every direction. The police and the soldiers followed in hot pursuit. Our eyes were smarting from the tear-gas they kept firing at us. By the time I had taken three, four steps, a hand gripped me. “Got you! Why are you running away?” I was thrown into a Land-Rover unceremoniously. And that’s how I came to be here. A lot of people were locked up in the factory, as there weren’t enough cells in the police stations around. The others with whom I was arrested were taken to another police station, but there was no room for me, so they brought me here. That is why I ask you: Are you really Matigari ma Njiruungi?’
Matigari Page 6