A Fool's Knot (4 page)

Just before first light the next morning, Musyoka's first wife, Mwangangi's mother, lit the pile of wood collected from the sacred tree. The party at last was over and everyone was silent. As the sky turned to the cold grey of half-light, the girls and boys with Mwangangi amongst them set off together for the last time to make their way slowly, reverently, even solemnly to the river bed. Though the rains this year had been poor, the river had not yet run dry and this was seen as a good omen. With a slow chant that bade farewell to childhood, the initiates parted on reaching the riverbank, men and boys going one way and girls and women the other, the latter, of course, downstream. The two groups would wash separately and, from that morning, as groups would remain apart for the rest of their lives. Until that day, they could intermingle, share beds, and even touch one another, but now as adults they must live by another code. Though many would eventually marry, never again would boys be admitted to these girl's meetings and never again would one of these girls follow a hunting party, not even to carry a calabash of beer for the men.

Fathers now accompanied sons and mothers accompanied daughters to their segregated washing areas. All that remained of the ceremony after the washing was the circumcision itself. Both boys and girls were now afraid, but, as required by their custom, they showed no emotion. They had been taught to look forward to this moment with a mixture of joy and awe. They must be happy for their re-birth into adulthood is at hand, and yet afraid because the innocence of childhood is set behind them and they must learn to shoulder full adult responsibilities towards their families, their community and their ancestors. The same was true for each boy and girl. When the moment of pain came, when they sat on the ground with their legs held apart, intertwined with those of their parents, the knife would cut as quickly and as cleanly as possible. The child should not cry, should not even wince, should not strain against the embrace. The children should do nothing, save for whispering thanks to their forefathers for guiding them safely towards adulthood. Then they would walk to rest on a bed of fresh green leaves, where mothers and fathers would come to dress the wounds with axe-water, herbs and milk. And so the process started. The washing began.

As Mwangangi stepped down from the riverbank, his whole body shuddered. Water had never seemed so cold. He sat down in the water and began to wash all over. Then, unexpectedly, his father called him. Mwangangi was not sure what to do. Musyoka called again, louder and more sternly. Reluctantly the boy left the water and rejoined his father on the bank. His father was suddenly angry, terribly angry, angry in a way the boy had never known a man could be. He said not a single word, but there was condemnation in his eyes. He then bent down in front of his son and took hold of the boy's leg with an iron grip. For as long as a minute he squeezed and rubbed the boy's flesh as he inspected the neat line of crisp scab which snaked up the back of his calf. Musyoka rubbed and scratched at the pale red stain that was clearly visible around the entire wound. Mwangangi's heart sank as his father stood and stared scornfully into his son's eyes. For some time they stood, apparently locked in one another's stare. In Mwangangi's eyes there were questions, in his father's condemnation. Then he hit him, hard across the face. It was in full view of everyone assembled there, but no one spoke. No one intervened. And with that, Musyoka turned his back on his son and walked slowly, dejectedly back towards his homestead. Mwangangi was hurt, not physically, but still deeply hurt and ashamed as he returned to the river and continued to wash.

One hour later his turn had come and he sat on the ground. Behind him, facing the same way, sat a man whose arms embraced him firmly and whose legs intertwined with and held apart his own. Mwangangi was not afraid. It would soon be over and he was proud. Then, dancing and chanting, came the doctor. Mwangangi looked at his father, but the figure now dressed in goatskins, beads and feathers showed no recognition. The boy struggled and cried as he was circumcised. It was meant to be fast, with the cut made cleanly and quickly, not this slow agonising tear. The boy struggled and cried again as the pain grew worse. And then he fainted.

When he awoke with a start his mother bent low over him and offered comfort. He was glad to see her, to feel her hand on his arm when he closed his eyes, to spread cold, thick milk on the wound, which still gave him such pain, to lull him to sleep.

Outside, the day had aged to late afternoon. Musyoka sat on a tree stump by his hut, whittling away at a stick with an old army knife. He had spoken to no one since the morning and had sat like this locked in thought, unable to acknowledge even the presence of another. When people had left his home that morning, giving thanks for the new manhood of their sons, they had talked and argued with one another. Some were ignorant and spoke of Mwangangi's shame and of how his cries of pain meant that he would abuse the office of doctor, and should never succeed his father. Others, who were wiser, had seen what had happened, and spoke of their fear for Musyoka and their disbelief at what he had done. Had the knife he used not been old, dirty, rusty and blunt? Had he not deliberately sheathed the sharpened knife before treating his son? Did he not gnaw and tear at the foreskin, instead of slicing it with one long cut? And had he also not cut the boy's legs? It was very confusing indeed and a matter upon which only God could now give judgment. This must be a test of Mwangangi's right to succeed his father. The ancestors must have been offended, because the boy's screams had been long and loud. Only they, the ancestors, could now decide what must be done. If the wound was infected and the boy's body poisoned, then God had made his judgment and the boy would die. If it were to heal, and thus return the boy to strength and confirmed adulthood, then God would have made his judgment, and once again Musyoka would embrace Mwangangi as his son and heir.

Only Musyoka knew the reality. The boy had let blood during the ceremony and had not immediately begged his father to clean the wound and cast out the spirits, which thereby had entered the body. Worse than that, he had tried to hide that special wound behind a white man's hand holding white man's medicine. Only Musyoka knew the reality. He had used a blunted, broken knife which the boy, himself, had last used to cut euphorbia from the hedgerows. The scratch had healed. It had been too late to say prayers, so the boy must die or soon the curse his body surely now protected would infect his whole family, clan and people, and that would be a dark day indeed for the people of Migwani. His knife tore another shaving off the stick. It fell onto a pile of others on the ground by his feet. It, along with the rest, would be gathered up later and burned on the fire. The stick in his hand would be oiled and cared for by his wife and become the trusted tool that she would use to grind maize to flour. The shavings, the discarded waste, helped to make the stick strong and true. This was the way of the world.

Father John had heard the gossip. The town, the market and the church were full of stories and conflicting reports of Mwangangi's pain. Some said he was paralysed and lay poisoned and dying in his father's home. Others claimed he had died under the knife, that his screams had stopped before the job was done and that his life had passed along the paths to his forefathers.

John believed all of the stories and yet none of them. He must see and know for himself. The path down the valley was rugged and steep. In places even walking was tricky and John's motorcycle slithered and skidded on dust and stones alike. When he switched off the engine, the Musyoka household was quiet. Musyoka, seated with his knife and stick offered him neither greeting nor even recognition.

The hours that followed were confused. Musyoka said nothing to Mwangangi or to John, and not much to anyone else. He was morose and withdrawn, even with other members of his family. Though she knew and trusted Father John, Mwangangi's mother could not allow him to be taken to hospital. Repeatedly she approached her husband and asked his advice, but stolidly, sternly, he refused to speak. Father John was willing to wait no longer. Sometimes helping, sometimes maybe obstructing, Mwangangi's mother watched as John O'Hara seated the boy on the motorcycle pillion. Father John shouted at her, telling her to be quiet and help him to harness the boy to his own body with a length of rope.

It was three in the morning when Sister came back to the convent in Muthale. “Well, Father John,” she began with a deep sigh, “I think you've saved him.” His eyes closed in a silent prayer. “The blood poisoning has not gone too far and we can treat it, so that should clear up. He has more than one wound. It was no accident, that's for sure. They are all messy and they will scar. They will take a while, but they will heal. The blood poisoning would have killed him.”

Father John and the other nuns in the room each gave out their own sigh of relief. “Sister, when I go home on leave I'll go to Kerry and tell them down there that your hospital is working miracles.”

“Tell them no such thing, Father,” she said. Sister had battled against prejudice, bureaucracy and sometimes her own will to finance and build the small brick-built hospital, but she wanted no credit for herself. She began to scoff at him, saying, “You can tell them that with hard work, sweat and the Grace of God we're saving lives. And that's enough.” With that, the vitriolic woman known for her boundless energy and quick temper, retired to her room to pray and offer thanks for another life saved before taking her rest.

 

 

 

January 1975

 

The bus from Nairobi growled to a halt in the town, raising a cloud of dust high above the tin-roofed shops around the marketplace. With the usual blasts on the horn, it had sped between the two lines of concrete buildings which constitute Migwani market, before a screech of tyres had brought it to a halt opposite the Safari Bar, where travellers would always congregate to await its arrival. Scenes that followed were the same every day. Beers would be finished in a hurry as the rush to get on the bus began. Women who had sat all day next to their piles of fruit and vegetables in the marketplace would hoist their loads on their backs and, screening their eyes from the dust whirls cast up by the braking bus, would rush to the door in a mad scramble to be first to get on. No one ever did manage to get straight on the bus, because the man who sold the tickets always stood on the steps to bar the way. But it was the same every day. On Fridays, about half of the hopeful travellers might not even manage to get on the bus at all, and others, who did manage to secure the few square inches of space needed to be squeezed into the aisle, would later be ejected since they had not sold enough of their wares to fund the two-shilling ride home. With dignity offended, they would set off defiantly on foot to walk the five or possibly ten miles home. And all this took time, so some of them would already be half a mile along the road by the time the bus, having renewed its journey and, packed to the rafters, passed by on its way north. These ejected and thus rejected women, of course, would shout their obscene abuse at the driver and his companion as it passed.

Amidst this confusion, slickly dressed young men in Western clothes, with beer swilling in their ever ampler bellies, would run out from the Safari on the corner shouting, “
Ngoja! Ngoja!
Wait! Wait!” They would always pay the fare and always find a seat. If there was none, they expected an old man or woman or, more usually, a child to vacate their own to make room. If, by some strange chance, their pockets were empty when the conductor came round, they would make some empty promise about paying for the journey the following day at the bus company's office in Mwingi. The conductor might look deeply perturbed and might even issue a warning about what might happen if they defaulted, but he would probably not dare to question their word and certainly would never suggest they get off and walk.

Then, with sacks of grain, chickens and goats loaded into the vast luggage box on top, a shout of “
Twende!
Let's go!” would come from the loaders, who would still be trying to negotiate their way down from the roof. There would be a shattering clank from the gearbox and an indeterminate groan or two from some or other moving part as the driver's foot pushed the throttle to the floor and more clouds of dust started to fly. Someone would also have checked that the town's madman, Munyasya, had not tried to prevent further progress by lying down under the wheels, which he often did, requiring the bus to engage reverse for a few metres before manoeuvring around him.

As the abuse started from the walking women, the two young men, who had loaded the freight onto the roof, would swing themselves into the bus from the external ladders welded by the entrance. Ten minutes later, when the dust had settled and the noise of the engines had drifted on past Kyome rock, the town would again be quiet, its dose of madness over for another day, with time again moving slowly, as it had done for as long as anyone might choose to remember.

All this took place out of Janet's sight as she sat drying her hair in the sun and wind, but she still saw everything. She had seen the bus come and go almost every day for nearly six months and could picture without effort the confusion and chaos it brought. In her first few weeks, she had wondered why, when teaching in class, the sound of a bus or indeed any vehicle passing along the road in front of the school would provoke her students to stand for a moment to peer out of the window. As time passed, she learned to do the same herself, and like the others, she did it not because she expected to see anything, but merely because, in this place, time was measured by the sun and buses more clearly than by any clock. It was time to get out of bed when the morning bus rattled up the hill on its way south, bound for Mombasa. It was time for lunch when the midday blue and white
Uhuru na Kazi
,
Freedom and Work
, went out to Nairobi. With the arrival from Nairobi there was time to relax as the sun began to set, and when the night bus from Mombasa sped anonymously through the dark, it was time to put out the lamp and sleep.