A Grain of Wheat (19 page)

‘Let us go,’ Mumbi called, already ahead of them by many yards. Gikonyo followed her, Karanja held the rear. The Kisumu train could be heard urging them: run and run, run and run. The path from
Mumbi’s home to the station passed through a small forest at the far end. Njeri was approaching the wood. Wambuku and Kihika were already hidden from view.

Slightly the taller, Karanja soon outdistanced Gikonyo. The carpenter summoned his strength in the race for Mumbi. Karanja overtook Mumbi and strode ahead; already he could see leaves of victory on his head. Gikonyo’s heart sank with fear of humiliation as he too overtook Mumbi; he panted hard, realizing, bitterly, that he would not catch up with Karanja, who had already disappeared into the wood.

Mumbi stopped running; she called out to Gikonyo who slowed down and waited for her.

‘I am tired,’ she said.

‘Why do you stop? We shall miss the train.’

‘Is it so important to you? Would you die if you didn’t see it today?’

Gikonyo was surprised: why was she angry with him?

‘I don’t want to go there today,’ she continued, more gently.

They walked side by side. Gikonyo smarted under the defeat in the race to the station. But as they came to the wood, the resentment melted away when it suddenly occurred to him that he was alone with Mumbi, the real object of the race. He groped for words, hoping, at the same time, the girl would not hear the loud beat of his heart. Mumbi, leaned against a tree trunk and Gikonyo saw that laughter had come back into her eyes. The wood made a cool shelter from the sun. The grass and the thick underfoliages teeming with flowers had grown higher, tree-tops and branches seemed to have dropped closer to the ground. Mumbi said:

‘You must have put a lot of hard work into fixing the handle to that panga. It was light and smooth; my mother was so pleased.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘I mean it was a small piece of work and I liked doing it.’

‘And you say it is nothing?’ she laughed quietly. Her cheeks were full; her voice stabbed into his flesh pleasantly.

‘I am sure,’ she went on, ‘it must be wonderful to be a carpenter, to work in wood. Out of broken pieces of timber, you make something.’

‘You knit pullovers, too.’

‘It is not the same. I once watched you in your workshop and it seemed – it just seemed to me you were talking with the tools.’

‘Let us explore the wood,’ Gikonyo suggested in a voice vibrant with subdued emotion. They came to an open place at the centre of the forest. Green Kigombe grass reached up to their knees. He stood facing Mumbi and surrendered himself to a power he knew drew them together. He held her hands and his fingers were full, so sensitive.

‘Mumbi, —’ he tried to say something as he held her to himself. She lay against his breast, their heart-beat each to each. It was all quiet. Mumbi was trembling, and this sent a quiver of fear and joy trilling in his blood. Gradually, he pulled her to the ground, the long grass covered them. Mumbi breathed hard, but could not, dare not, speak. One by one, Gikonyo removed her clothes as if performing a dark ritual in the wood. Now her body gleamed in the sun. Her eyes were soft and wild and submissive and defiant. Gikonyo passed his hands through her hair and over her breasts, slowly coaxing and smoothing stiffness from her body, until she lay limp in his hands. Suddenly, Gikonyo found himself suspended in a void, he was near breaking point and as he swooned into the dark depth he heard a moan escape Mumbi’s parted lips. She held him tight to herself. Their breath was now one. The earth moved beneath their one body into a stillness.

At the station, Karanja found the crowd and the train dull. He was tired, his stomach was empty. The exciting possibilities he had felt alive when Mumbi was present had fallen from the air. In vain, his eyes searched for Mumbi in the restless crowd.

The women, as usual, were more colourfully dressed than men, in fashions that differed from ridge to ridge. Those from Ndeiya and ridges miles away from Rung’ei had bright blue, green or yellow calicoes passed under their armpits and ending in complicated flower-shaped knots over the right shoulder. Thin wool or cotton belts hung loosely from their fat waists. The long belt-tails flapped and rippled behind as the women walked along the platform, parading themselves before the men. Most of the girls from Thabai, Kihingo or Ngeca had
cotton printed frocks in styles two or three years behind the current fashion in Nairobi.

Not so the men.

Some came in baggy trousers and jackets bought second-hand at the Indian or African shops in Rung’ei. The knees, small black heads, popped through the holes in the trousers as the men walked along the platform, flinging their legs carelessly but firmly, each step an unnecessary emphasis of their manhood.

Karanja stood apart from this moving throng. Jealousy crept into him, a surprise because he had always refused to consider Gikonyo a serious rival: how could the carpenter, without wit or any suavity, even dare? But now he knew that Gikonyo and Mumbi were together, alone, somewhere. He was angry at the knowledge. How could Mumbi make him pant and sweat in the sun, all for nothing? How could she make him trot ahead, like a child, so that she might remain behind with Gikonyo? He thought of rushing back, seek her out, humiliate her, force her to her knees in public, till she cried to him to save her. The impulse to effect this was so strong that he started walking away from the platform even as the thought was forming. Then he stopped, stood, debated whether he ought to run or not, as if the manner of his retreat from the platform would determine the degree of success in his self-appointed mission. What if he should find her in Gikonyo’s arms? He traced the carpenter’s rough hands on Mumbi’s body beginning from the breasts down to the navel and—No! He dare not, must not contemplate it; he swore, torturing his mind with more sordid images. No, not the carpenter, he shuddered, calling upon the Lord. Else let heaven fall, the earth tremble, people tumble, break their hips and moan (oh, the terrible moaning) down to the gaping vaults to suffering and death.

The violence of his own reactions surprised him and he tried to control the shuddering, reasoning that he had never, in any case, told Mumbi his love. And nothing perhaps had passed between Gikonyo and Mumbi. This reflection comforted him. He clung to it, elaborated it and supported it with numerous reasons. He even attempted to laugh to drive out the unease hovering at the edges of his new-found calm.

He moved to join a group of men a few yards away. He had made up his mind to act quickly and open his heart to Mumbi. The men crowded around Kihika and with animated faces listened to him speak. Further down the platform other men and women were strolling or standing in groups of varying sizes: the sight of men and women laughing together made Karanja miss Mumbi terribly.

Suddenly the whistle shrilled, the train pulled out of the station, and Karanja, who was watching it intently, had a strange experience. First the whistle shrilled and the coaches clinked into his flesh. (This sensation in fact tickled through him long after the train had gone.) Then he was standing on the edge of the platform and staring into a white blank abyss. He saw this clearly, he could swear afterwards. The rails, the people at the platform, the Rung’ei shops, the whole country went in circles, faster and faster, before his eyes and then abruptly stopped. People stopped talking. Nothing moved or made noise. Karanja was frightened by this absolute cessation of all motion and noise and he looked about him to confirm the truth of what he saw. But nothing had stopped. Everybody was running away as if each person feared the ground beneath his feet would collapse. They ran in every direction; men trampled on women; mothers forgot their children; the lame and the weak were abandoned on the platform. Each man was alone, with God. It was the clarity of the entire vision that shook him. Karanja braced himself for the struggle, the fight to live. I must clear out of this place, he told himself, without moving. The earth was going round again. I must run, he thought, it cannot be helped, why should I fear to trample on the children, the lame and the weak when others are doing it?

A man standing next to him quickly put his arms around Karanja preventing him from falling on the hard surface.

‘What is wrong, man? You drunk?’

‘I – I don’t know,’ Karanja said, rubbing his eyes like a man from sleep. Everything on the platform was normal. The train was just disappearing at the far corner. ‘It’s my head,’ he explained to the man who had helped him. ‘It was going round and round.’

‘It’s the sun. It makes people feel dizzy. Why don’t you sit under a shade and rest?’

‘I am all right,’ Karanja laughed uneasily and walked away to join the group around Kihika. Few had witnessed the little drama. Karanja found Kihika explaining something about Christ.

‘No struggle for Wiyathi can succeed without such a man. Take the case of India, Mahatma Gandhi won freedom for people and paid for it with his own blood.’

Karanja, slightly shaken by his recent vision, suddenly felt irritated with Kihika.

‘You say one thing now. The next hour you say another,’ he said, addressing Kihika. ‘This morning you said Jesus had failed. And now you say we need Christ. Are you becoming a revivalist?’

Karanja’s contemptuous tone of unbelief and slightly derisive laughter hurt Kihika. He hesitated a little, not knowing how to react to this public challenge from a friend. People came closer and nodded their heads to see if Kihika had really been silenced. Kihika controlled his anger with difficulty and went on:

‘Yes – I said he had failed because his death did not change anything, it did not make his people find a centre in the cross. All oppressed people have a cross to bear. The Jews refused to carry it and were scattered like dust all over the earth. Had Christ’s death a meaning for the Children of Israel? In Kenya we want deaths which will change things, that is to say, we want true sacrifice. But first we have to be ready to carry the cross. I die for you, you die for me, we become a sacrifice for one another. So I can say that you, Karanja, are Christ. I am Christ. Everybody who takes the Oath of Unity to change things in Kenya is a Christ. Christ then is not one person. All those who take up the cross of liberating Kenya are the true Christs for us Kenyan people.’

Njeri and Wambuku, with a few other girls, came and joined the group. The political talk ended, most of the young men impressed with Kihika’s mind. The intensity on their faces broke as they smiled and laughed with the girls.

Karanja and Kihika, however, remained abstracted, for different reasons, and without either of them planning it, mutually avoided one another. They remained quiet all the way to the dance in the wood.

It was quiet and cool in Kinenie Forest. Again the men and women fell into groups and laughed and buzzed, animating the wood. Somebody thrust a guitar into Karanja’s hands. ‘Play,’ the girls shouted. When he played his own guitar, Karanja always felt the strings’ immediate response to the touch of his fingers. Today he had not brought his own instrument, but he was excited as he tried to establish similar dominion over this guitar. The excitement, caught in the strings, reached the people who had already started dancing. The first few dances were free.

Wambuku and Kihika danced together. The music thrilled her and she moved closer to Kihika, her head hung back, looking at him with eyes that sparkled. Her pointed breasts heaved back and forth, rippled into Kihika so that he forgot the incident at the station. Seeing them dance so closely, Karanja remembered Mumbi. He had once or twice played to her at her home. Now he wanted to play to her again and this desire awakened wires in the blood whose delicate vibration went to his fingers. The strings would say his heart. The appeal of pregnant desire would surely go beyond the forest, to the village, to Mumbi.

Karanja played differently from Gikonyo. Gikonyo went into the instrument with a kind of dark fury. At times the instrument possessed him and his playing had crude power. But Karanja stood above the instrument; he controlled it, like the carpenter with his tools, so that his playing was more sure and more finished.

A man walked to where Njeri was standing. She declined to dance with a dreamy shake of the head. Her eyes followed Kihika and Wambuku weaving their way round the silent trees, their feet shuffling through the fallen leaves. The tree-trunks also seemed to move among the dancing couples. Karanja sang in sad exultation. Now the men and the forest belonged to him. But he only wanted Mumbi to hear him; she would hear the mad desire in his voice. She would run to him, she must surely follow him. For how could she throw herself on the carpenter? This brought back the pain, and Karanja’s voice and guitar ended in mid-air, and to an abrupt profound silence. Then big applause and exclamations of delight tore the silence into shreds.

Kihika and Wambuku found an open place in the sun. The thick part of the forest, the dancers in the wood, and the hungry eyes of Njeri were behind them. Here green wattle trees and bush sloped steeply into the valley below. The valley sprawled flat for a distance and then bounced into the ridge of small hills. Beyond, and to the right, Kihika could just trace the outlines of Mahee Police Station, a symbol of that might which dominated Kenya to the door of every hut.

‘Destroy that, and the whiteman is gone,’ Kihika thought. ‘He rules with the gun, the lives of all the black people of Kenya.’ A light danced in Kihika’s eyes, his heart dilated with the intensity of this vision, exulting in it, for a time forgetting the woman beside him. But he was aware of her breathing, and it seemed she had come here so that he might show her this thing. He took her hand in his hand his eyes still fixed on Mahee and the Rift Valley.

‘And this road, too, this is the road the whiteman followed into the heart of the land,’ he said slowly, thinking of the railway line which could just be seen running along the slopes of the Escarpment into the Valley.

‘Do you never forget politics, Kihika?’ Wambuku asked impatiently, the question poised between angry warning and desire.