Petals of Blood (16 page)

1 ~ The year that followed Wanja’s departure from Ilmorog was momentous for the whole country. It was the year that started with a mysterious political murder in open daylight without the assassins ever being caught. He was a national, of Asian origins it is true, but one famous in the whole country for his earlier involvement in the struggle for independence and after, for his consistent opposition to any form of post-independence alliance with imperialism. He was an implacable foe of wealth gotten from the poor and whether in or outside Parliament, he would call for an agrarian revolution. Rumours were rife in the country for the whole of that year: people would meet in groups of three or four to discuss the latest rumour and theory. Was it true that he was in league with this or that politician? Maybe he had been planning something fishy: a coup d’état? But how—? Communism: what was this? Opposition to foreign control of the economy? Call for agrarian revolution? Call for the end to poverty? Asian: maybe that and this. But he had been imprisoned and detained by the British in the years of struggle? So many questions without answers and a current of fear, the first of many others to follow, coursed through the veins of the new nation.

For Ilmorog the year saw yet another rain shortage. For a second year following there was only one harvest more miserable than that of the year before.

So that when the year of assassination ended and still there was no rain people of Ilmorog put on frowning faces and anxiously looked up to the sky. But the sun seemed to mock their inquiring faces.

The sun sent direct waves of heat in exaggerated brightness that almost blinded the eye to look. The wind would suddenly whirl dust
and rubbish into the air as if sending an offering to God-sun: but as suddenly the wind dust-storm would subside and the rubbish would fall disconsolately to the ground as if the offering had been found unacceptable. The peasant farmers of Ilmorog felt this headache giving heat-rays on their dry skins, saw the little furious whirling of dust and rubbish and retreated to the verandahs of their huts: in the fields were no more green umbrella leaves of mwariki to give shade and shelter. Still they went to the shambas not because there was any weeding and breaking of the earth to do but simply because they were attracted to their shambas as a moth to light. They could not help it. Now under the eaves of their huts they exchanged gossip and memories and wicked pleasantries but underneath it was a disquieting consciousness that this year might be a season of drought.

Njogu, Muturi, Ruoro, Njuguna were sitting outside Abdulla’s shop. Ordinarily they would have taken the cows and goats to the plains. But it was the end of the year and the beginning of a new one and the school was closed for holidays and it was the children’s turn. What worried them was that the previous two years had only yielded one harvest in September. Thereafter it had not rained except for a few intermittent falls – the kind of rain that only drove away lazy ones to shelter. So if this New Year’s njahi rains were late as had been the case in the last two years the community would almost immediately be faced by famine. But as they sat outside Abdulla’s shop they tried many subjects but they always came back to the rains.

‘It might still rain . . . sometimes it has been known to rain at the beginning of the year or a little bit later,’ said Njogu.

‘I don’t know why, but the weather is becoming less and less predictable. It’s as if something has gone into its head,’ argued Njuguna. ‘Mwathi wa Mugo seems to be losing his power over the rains,’ he added with an ironic smile, without looking at Muturi.

‘It may be those things that the Americans and Russians are throwing into the sky.’

‘It could be. I hear that they might be sending travellers to the moon. Is it possible?’

‘There was a time we didn’t believe it was possible for a man to
walk on a metal horse of two wheels,’ Njogu said as he saw Munira riding the metal horse toward them. ‘Until Munoru rode on one.’

‘You know when the white man first came. He removed his shoes and we thought he had taken off his leg. People ran away saying: what is this new magic?’

They laughed at this and asked for more to drink. Munira leaned his bicycle against the wall, and sat down, asking for beer at the same time.

‘Beer will soon be our only water . . .’ he said.

‘Mwalimu . . . when do you open school?’ Njuguna asked him. ‘You have now been with us two years. That has been good for our children.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We are now in the middle of January. Unless I get more teachers, it will not be possible to carry on. The first year I had two classes. The second year, I had three classes. Now it’ll be four classes.’

‘Where will you get the teachers? Which VIP will want to come and bake in the sun?’

‘I will be going to Ruwa-ini. I’ll go and tell Mzigo this: unless you give me at least one extra teacher, you better close the school.’

They were silent at his words. For a moment they all withdrew into private thoughts. So Mwalimu was preparing to leave them? Two years had maybe been too long for him.

Munira had hoped that with Wanja’s going he would recapture his previous rhythm and aloof dominance. But this was an elusive dream, he had soon realized, and for a month after she had gone Munira could be seen galloping all over Ilmorog, a dustcloud following him. ‘It is the sun,’ some of them said. After four or five months of hoping in vain that she would return, he went to Ruwa-ini on a market day, pretending that he was only looking for something to buy but didn’t get anything. He again found a reason to stay the night at Ruwa-ini and drank in almost all the bars. He ended up in Furaha Bar. There he saw a girl at the juke-box. Her back was turned to him. But his heart gave exaggerated wild beats and he could not keep up the pretence: he was looking for Wanja. He sat on a high stool at the counter and waited for her to recognize him. First the guitar: then
the choral voices rose and dominated the atmosphere: it was a religious hymn and the girl now turned – oh! it was not Wanja – and started singing with the voices, her eyes slightly shut, as if she was part of the choral voices issuing from the box. When it was over, she came to the counter and asked for a drink. What interested Munira was her knowledge of nearly all the languages of Kenya. When she spoke Gikuyu one thought she really was a Mugikuyu: when she spoke Luo one thought she couldn’t be anything else. The same with Swahili, Kamba and Luhya. He soon lost interest in her: but he had liked the hymn and he went over, put a shilling into the slot and pressed it. It was sung by Ofafa Jericho Choir and the hymn was moving. The girl ran back to the box and Munira was so fascinated with her total almost seductive absorption in the hymn that, for a time, he forgot his disappointment at not finding Wanja. He even thought of buying her drinks and asking her to bed for the night. But the religious hymn brought back the memory of his boyhood escapade and later attempt at purification by fire, and he lost all interest in the girl’s body.

He had returned to Ilmorog after that fruitless search for a dream and for the rest of that year he threw himself into his teaching and tried to suppress memories of Wanja and their lovemaking in a hut. But things were not quite the same. At least Abdulla’s place was different: Abdulla himself hardly ever spoke more than two sentences to him. He was always glad when he found the elders in Abdulla’s place.

‘Is it true that these people are trying to walk to the moon, Mwalimu?’ Muturi asked to move their minds away from thoughts of Mwalimu’s possible desertion.

‘Yes.’

‘These people are strange. They have no fear even of God. They have no respect for holiness. They ruin things on earth. And now they go to disturb God in his realm. It is no wonder He gets angry and withholds rain.’

‘Indeed this is true. Look at us. We have always feared God and we have not tried to probe closely into his ways. This is why God was able to spare us from utter ruin. That’s why after the Battle of Ilmorog he turned the colonialists’ eyes the other way. And you will agree
with me that we of Ilmorog did not lose too many sons in war for Uhuru despite Nyakinyua’s husband’s mad action.’

‘Nyakinyua’s husband, Njamba Nene. He was a brave man,’ Njuguna commented.

‘That he was – so old and yet pointing a gun at a white man!’

‘He redeemed Ilmorog with his blood,’ said Njogu.

‘And so did your grandson – don’t forget that Ole Masai had Ilmorog blood in him.’

And suddenly they were all startled by Abdulla’s stream of curses at Joseph. This was strange because for a whole year after Wanja’s visit they had not heard him curse. Again they kept quiet as if they were holding a silence in memory of Nyakinyua’s husband and of Ole Masai whom they only knew in name.

‘I don’t agree with you there,’ said Muturi, once again trying to change the subject. ‘We have been losing our sons to the cities.’

‘Oh yes,’ agreed Ruoro and he coughed to clear his throat. ‘I don’t understand young men these days. In our time we were compelled to work for these oppressing Foreigners. And even then, after earning enough to pay tax or fines, we would run back to our shambas. Now take my sons . . . I don’t even know where they are. One went to work in Nairobi, another in Kisumu, another in Mombasa, and they hardly ever come back. Only one, who occasionally comes back to see his wife Wambui, and even he hardly stays for a day.’

‘Mine too,’ observed Njuguna. ‘One went to work as a cook in the settled area. He was then detained and even after detention went back to work as a cook for the new African settlers. Imagine that: a big man able to use his hand cooking for others. The other three are in Nairobi.’

‘Actually we should not blame them,’ rejoined Muturi. ‘After that first big war there was no more land in which to move. And also there will always be those who will never resist the call of strange places. My father used to tell me that even before the white Foreigners came, a few people would travel to the waters carrying ivory, and sometimes they would not come back.’

‘Like Munoru who sighed after new things,’ said Ruoro. They were again silent, for a few seconds, as if all their minds were on this
movement of their sons and the calamity which had come over the land. Then Njuguna coughed and looked into space:

‘You are right about the shortage of land. I remember the words of my youngest son before he left for the City. It was soon after a harvest like the ones we have had these last two years. He said: “I have worked on this land for a year. My nails are broken. But look at the yield. It mocks the strength in these arms. Tell me father, when the tax gatherer comes round, what shall I give him? When I go to Ruwa-ini and I see nice clothes, where shall I get the coins to give the shopkeeper? I must go to the big city and try my future there: like my other brothers.” What words could I tell him?’

‘This land used to yield. Rains used not to fail. What happened?’ inquired Ruoro.

It was Muturi who answered.

‘You forget that in those days the land was not for buying. It was for use. It was also plenty, you need not have beaten one yard over and over again. The land was also covered with forests. The trees called rain. They also cast a shadow on the land. But the forest was eaten by the railway. You remember they used to come for wood as far as here – to feed the iron thing. Aah, they only knew how to eat, how to take away everything. But then, those were Foreigners – white people.

‘Now that we have an African Governor and African big chiefs, they will return some of the fat back to these parts . . .’

‘You mean bring back our sons?’ retorted Njuguna. Then he coughed, a cough with a meaning, and turned to Abdulla: ‘Now about this, your donkey: don’t you think it is eating too much grass in a season of drought?’

Munira stood up. He left them arguing about the donkey. For him Ilmorog without Wanja had been a land of drought. But he was strangely affected by their words. He remembered his strange conversation with Karega almost two years before and his own sudden thoughts about an unevenly cultivated garden.

Every day they all waited for the rains, or a change in the sun. They all waited for something to happen. But every morning they woke to wind and dust and a dazzling sun.

As the days dragged on and there was no visible change, Abdulla’s donkey became increasingly the centre of talk. Elders met and discussed what they could do about it.

Early another day Njuguna, Ruoro, Njogu and Muturi once again called on Abdulla and they refused to sit down. They also refused to drink anything. They would not even look Abdulla in the eye. Abdulla saw the shifty eyes in solemn faces.

‘You appear burdened in the heart,’ said Abdulla. ‘Is it anything I can help?’

‘Do you see how the sun shimmers? It almost blinds the eye to look,’ Njuguna commented, vaguely pointing to the sun-baked land.

‘It will rain,’ said Abdulla without conviction.

‘It is not that we are saying it will not rain!’ said Ruoro. ‘It is too early to tell about the vagaries of the weather.’

‘Can’t you see the dust and the wind?’ added Ruoro.

‘What do you want?’

‘We are only messengers from the village,’ said Njuguna.

‘We come in peace and good heart.’

‘But what do you want from me?’ Just at that point, his donkey hee-hooed across Ilmorog. The elders looked at one another. Njuguna delivered what he called only a friendly message, a request.

Abdulla watched them walk away, the sun shimmering on their bare heads. Emissaries of evil, he hissed, and buried his face in his hands on the table: what could he do without his other leg?

‘So it is a question of my one donkey or their cows and goats? No, I’ll not have it killed or sent away. I would rather leave the village. Oh yes: they want to drive me from Ilmorog.’

Joseph looked at him. He feared that this would mean that he would not return to school for his second year. He wanted to weep. Perhaps if Wanja had not gone, he thought in his boyish, sad but grateful remembrance of her action.

2 ~ When at long last school reopened, Munira found that he could not possibly deal with four classes all by himself. Now, looking back over the two years that had gone, it seemed a miracle that he had managed to carry on the school that long. If he could get even one
extra teacher, he could perhaps manage it. Standards I and III could meet in the mornings and Standards II and IV in the afternoons.