A Fool's Knot (16 page)

Innocently Mwanza replied without hesitation. “They will go to the hospital to be treated by the doctor.”

Janet did not react. John laughed a little. Michael laughed hard, knocking the table and causing several bottles, some full, to go crashing to the floor, frothing and foaming their contents. “Oh Jaysus!” shouted Michael. Instinctively they all jumped to their feet. Janet gave a little scream as beer flooded over her shoes. Mwanza's arms and legs seemed to travel in every direction at once, as he rushed to stoop and pick up what was within reach.

“What on earth has got into you?” asked Janet, infected by Michael's continued laughter.

Michael struggled to speak, but managed a few words. “I don't believe it!” he said. Turning towards Mwanza, who was now grovelling under the table trying to locate his rolling bottle of soda. “Do you not realise that circumcision itself is regarded by these same Europeans as a mere pagan practice? Why do you not reject that as well?”

Mwanza, crouched on one knee, glared at Michael and thumped the table as he replied. “Jesus Christ was circumcised! How dare you call it pagan when it is a Christian act?”

“Jesus Christ wasn't a Christian. He was Jewish. I suggest you go and see your American friends in Kyome!” Michael was deadly serious now. “Go and sleep with their women and tell me if they are circumcised – and don't give me any of your shit about fornication. Remember that you got rid of your first wife because she gave you no children! The fact is, Mwanza…” Mwanza began to shout excitedly in Kikamba to the others in the bar, but Michael shouted louder. “The fact is, Mwanza, that you respect your ‘pagan' origins when it suits your own purpose. When you want to show off just how modern and civilised you are, you would insult your own father with the name ‘pagan' and despise him for respecting his own culture.”

Mwanza could take no more. He stormed away from the table, shouting across to Mbuvu, who was still propping up the bar, having been an amused spectator of events. He was, of course, usually a participant in heated discussion and was clearly enjoying merely watching for once. “Councillor Mbuvu, I will come and talk to you, away from these insulting Europeans.” He then made a sweeping gesture towards the group, prompting John to turn and face Michael, his eyebrows raised in surprise. It was only then they all noticed that Lesley had disappeared. Like everyone else, she had stood up when Michael upset the table, but now her seat was empty. They looked around, but she was no longer in the bar.

“Did you see where Lesley went?” John asked Michael, and then Janet.

“I've no idea,” said Michael. “Maybe I knocked some beer onto her and she went outside to clean it off.”

“She went just a moment ago. She seemed upset,” said Janet.

John continued to look around. Janet noticed the sudden concern on his face and asked him what was wrong, but he offered no answer. She told him that she was on her way to the toilet and would check if Lesley was there. With that, she made her way to the yard behind the bar and crossed the small courtyard to where three doors were let into a concrete box by the compound's back wall. The three doors were all closed, so she waited for a moment. People did not spend long inside those places, which were just shrouds for holes in the ground that stank to high heaven. The night was drenched in moonlight and the air was cool and refreshing after the kerosene stuffiness of the bar. Every visit to the bar's toilets provoked a laugh, since the three doors before her were marked in English, ‘Men', ‘Women' and ‘Special'. Behind the first two doors were the usual facilities of a large concrete slab with a one-foot square hole knocked through the middle, thereby allowing access to the twenty-foot deep earth pit beneath. Behind ‘Special' was a gleaming white European-style porcelain water closet, Armitage Shanks vintage. The catch, however, was that in Migwani there was no running water to flush it, nor plumbing to purge it. After the last customer left the bar, Mwinzi habitually carried his bowl of murky washing-up water from behind the bar to cast it from distance into the pot. This washed whatever contents had amassed during the evening around the bend and straight onto the ground over the other side of the back wall where cockroaches and flies would be waiting to consume. In the local jargon, the standard conveniences were known as ‘long drops', while the ‘special' glorified in the local title of ‘short one'. By this time of night, the drop was usually considerably shorter, so that particular privacy was something to be avoided.

The door marked ‘Men' opened first and the occupant strode proudly out into the night, apparently oblivious of Janet's presence. From behind the door marked ‘Women' came a low murmur of voices. Inside, John's young clerk, Syengo, was making the most of this day of celebration. Janet recognised the other voice as that of one of the town's choosier prostitutes, a girl who restricted the granting of her services to those who could pay cash up front: government servants, teachers or businessmen. The ten shillings she had probably already negotiated and collected would buy her cigarettes and beer, and also provide food for her children, who lived with the grandmother.

After emerging through the ‘Men' door, Janet returned to the bar and told John that Lesley was not at the toilets. John had already looked immediately outside and had not seen her there. He said he would leave, saying that she may have wandered back to the mission where he had left the car.

“I'll come with you,” said Michael. “I'll have to go and feed the cockroaches anyway and I'd rather do it in the moonlight under a tree than in those shit boxes at the back.”

Outside there was again no immediate sign of Lesley, so they separated, John going to the left and Michael to the right, towards Ngandi's ever stationary tractor, which stood like a town landmark in front of its owner's shop. Michael had not fully registered John's concern and ambled towards the tractor with his own needs uppermost in his priorities. He went nonchalantly about his well-practised routine of urinating over the tractor's bald tyres, but in mid-flow was distracted by the appearance of a figure some distance away, silhouetted by the soft moonlight against the dull red earth.

“Lesley?” he called, trying to speed his task to its completion.

Surprised, the figure looked up and turned to face the sound.

“Lesley?” he repeated, as he emerged from behind the dampened machine. “Is that you?”

This time the figure approached with a quickening step. “Where is John?” she asked. She was in tears.

John, who had already had time to walk down to the end of the town and back, heard the words and spoke before Michael could offer his answer. Lesley went straight to him and buried her face in his chest. For some minutes she clung to him, unable to speak.

Michael stood alone and apart, suddenly sobered by Lesley's obvious pain. Though he was urged to offer consolation, he was at a loss as to what to do. Blank inaction was the only result.

Gradually, as her tears began to subside, Lesley tried to speak. The words were confused. They meant nothing to Michael, but much more to John.

“Father Michael,” said Lesley, “please forgive me… When he spoke… Your father came today… with Anna…” And then she was quiet again. For a moment she could neither speak nor cry. The moonlight provided more than enough light for Michael to see the fear on her face. Then she began to cry again, saying, “We should never have sent her. We should never have allowed her to go there again…”

John's words were edged with suppressed impatience. “Lesley, he is Anna's grandfather. He wants to see her.”

John and Lesley returned to the mission with Michael, collected the car and left immediately. A minute later, Janet and Michael heard the blast on the horn that announced to Syengo that it was time to go home. Janet wondered if the young man had finished his consultation in the toilet, but she could not be amused, since Lesley Mwangangi's sudden change of mood still dominated her thoughts. They had encouraged Lesley to talk, but she would say nothing. John also would offer nothing by way of explanation.

An hour later the bar was closed and Migwani town's other oil lamp was out for the night. The District Officer's Land Rover had left the mission compound and would probably be just arriving in Mwingi, its passengers, except for John and Lesley, feeling the effects of the day's celebration. John was driving, having decided that both his driver and Syengo were too drunk to do the job. Lesley was quiet, having said no more since they left Migwani. In Migwani, Janet and Michael were still awake, still together, still sharing one another's company. They sat and talked by candlelight, the words now fewer, the silences longer.

“They were in Nairobi for a few days last week,” Michael told Janet over a sobering cup of coffee. “John had some business in the Ministry, some course or other. Since it's school holiday time, their daughter was at home, but she didn't want to go back to Nairobi because she had only just arrived from there a few days ago. The plan was for her to spend the time with John's family in Kamandiu. She's been there a few times. She must have arrived home today.”

“Lesley was certainly very upset,” said Janet. “But wouldn't say a word while any of us were around.”

“It must have been something I said. What was I talking about?” he said, his eyes searching his memory. “Something triggered it, something we were talking about…”

The two were silent for a while. The only sounds that crossed the room's shadows came from the ecstatic wing beats of a moth which hovered near the candle flame.

“I can't remember,” he said scolding himself, “I can't remember what we were talking about…”

 

 

 

May 1975

 

The sun sets in contrasts these days. The western sky is vivid blue at sunset, an azure memory of daylight's intensity, melting slowly to the soft haze of grey-turquoise half-light before this procession of darkness from the east. Kirinyaga, as if reborn with each sunset, rises through the evening mist to show itself anew to unbelievers for just a few short moments before one's eyes, peering through the gathering gloom, cannot be convinced it ever existed. This mountain pap feeds the sky, gives light to the suckling sun it hides, so that new day might follow otherwise endless dark. It is evidence of land's motherhood. We, all living things, amid false pride and blinded pity, are again revealed as no more than we are: as yet unweaned pups crawling the thicket of our mother's belly towards the summit nipple that can feed us. For these few minutes each night we see our way. We plot our course and reflect on the fruitlessness of our day, when our task was forgotten and we slipped further from our goal. As if to stoke life's resolve to survive, the mountain comes now to give us hope, to replenish the energy to succeed, to point us toward the end of our path. But in our sadness, as we mourn the death of the sun, we see that, like the horizon, our nurture has receded, our path is still long and, until another day, we have lost our way. For how long can the mountain feed the sun? For how long can someone wander before his aim, too, is dead?

To the north and west rises Kirinyaga, pointed, a silhouette with a silver edge that swallows the sun. To the south and east is Kilimanjaro's distant cone, flat-topped, menacing and brooding, its summit snows lime-lit by watery daylight, its base already rejoicing in eagerly grasped darkness. Mountains cannot meet. They are eternally alone in their confrontation, but they are bridged. For no longer than it takes a man to stand, look and notice, cirrus clouds high in the roof of the sky glow yellow, burn crimson, fade grey to prepare for night and then, mysteriously, the air itself begins to shine. Incandescent, the paths to our forefathers bridge the peaks, pass intangible and separate overhead and disappear to a near-joined infinity beyond the horizon, growing ever closer, but never finding a place in this world to meet. Only souls may go there. Only the dead can walk these paths to the junction of earth and sky from whence they came to the place where the sun is re-lit and the harvest forever cut.

But those paths are only for the privileged, for those who have a family to mourn their passing, to remember a name for just long enough to re-energise the morbid soul. The way is long, the journey difficult, the pitfalls and dangers as hazardous as those in life. So the liberated soul must rest for a while to be nurtured by the memories of the living. But a different fate awaits those who cannot be mourned. They must wander this earth forever, without hope of even starting their journey. These are the spirits we fear, their eternal imprisonment firing them to envy, an anger they seek to vent on the living.

In darkness the world is transformed. No more is it the land that nurtures men. No more does it offer the comfort and safety of a familiar home. Night is the world of the spirit, the time when the dead visit the living to see names continued, to see the unchanging preserved, to protect and reward the virtuous, to try and punish the wicked. Night is the time when people sleep, and thus themselves mimic death, so if it should come to them they are already close to knowing its ways and will not fear its call. And if it beckons, their souls will walk the paths in the sky led by those who already know the way. But if they should see death while waking, its clutches would be those of a claw, and their spirit would be cast down on the earth to wander, tormented, like one still alive. Some of those led along the celestial paths will join their forefathers to then watch over the safety of those who bear their name. Some cast to the earth will live on, trapped by the form of a snake or an insect. The dead, the ones who forged the curse, are powerless to break the spell. Only the living, and one appointed by descent, may free the soul from its bondage and relieve those who have survived it from the torment of evil. The names of the dead must never be spoken. They may not be dead and they may hear.