A Grain of Wheat (23 page)

Gikonyo suddenly remembered that he was expected to report his arrival in the village to the Chief. The State of Emergency was not yet over: the whiteman still coughed and people everwhere danced to the tune, however rough. He had no difficulty in finding the Chief’s house. It was inside the compound of the Thabai Homeguard Post. On the other side of the post, below it, ran the long tarmac road from Nakuru to the big city.

He stood at the door of the Chief’s house and the ground below him began to move. Gikonyo stared at the stern face of the Chief. Fate was mocking him. This could not be.

‘Come right in,’ Karanja said. Gikonyo was shaken with bitter incomprehension – Karanja, a Chief, Karanja sitting erect behind a table, now lowering his eyebrows, the frown adding severity to his face.

‘I said come in,’ Karanja repeated in a voice, unnecessarily loud.

Gikonyo walked in, gingerly, conflicting thoughts passing through his mind. He sat on a chair and bit his lower lip to steady a bitterness close to tears as whispers went, simultaneously, through his head and heart: God was cruel, else, why didn’t he spare him this humiliation? And he saw Karanja, his old friend, was watching his every reaction, Karanja, who now talked to Gikonyo coldly as if he did not know him, as if Gikonyo was a criminal.

‘Let me see,’ Karanja was saying, pulling out a printed sheet of paper hanging from the wall. ‘You are – eh – Gikonyo, son of – eh – Waruhiu,’ he continued, ticking something on the paper. Gikonyo watched this, his head bowed like an aged person’s, and bit deep into his lower lip.

‘Listen carefully. You have now come back into a normal life in the
village. People here obey the law, hear? No meetings at night, no stories about Gandhi and Unity and all that. The whiteman is here to stay.’

Gikonyo unexpectedly stood up, and without knowing what he was doing, started for the door. Karanja let him go up to the door and then shouted: ‘Stop!’ Gikonyo stopped, as if paralysed by the voice, and then turned round, waiting.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To you!’ he hissed back, rushing towards the table, hands spread, reaching for Karanja’s throat. At the table, he stopped short and emitted a cry of fear: Karanja pointed a pistol at Gikonyo’s heart.

‘Sit down, Gikonyo.’

Gikonyo sat back in the chair, his body shaking visibly; everything assumed the character of a dream, but he spat on the floor, forcing as much disgust as he could manage in the act.

‘You may spit on the floor,’ Karanja said, in obvious triumph, leaning on his chair and placing the pistol on the table. ‘But let me tell you this as a friend – you have to learn your lesson. Do you see the watchtower outside? A word from me, for what you tried to do just now, and the tower would be your home for a week or two.’

Everything had happened so quickly that Gikonyo could not sort out the feelings and thoughts that whirled through his head: he only knew that the man with whom he had taken an oath to fight the whiteman was talking to him about the power of the white people, the man with whom he used to play the guitar, who often came to the workshop for gossip, was now shouting at him.

And no sooner was he outside the Chief’s house and office, than he remembered Karanja was the man who had slept with Mumbi, for whom she had carried a child in her womb for nine months. Somehow Karanja’s name had not registered in Gikonyo’s heated brain: all last night and all today he had thought of Mumbi as only going to bed with other men. Not once, not even in the office did he bring Karanja into his other torture, which lay, as it were, in a different compartment of his mind. But now the image of Mumbi moaning with pleasure as her naked body bore Karanja’s heavy weight, corroded him everywhere. He recreated the scene in its sordid details: the creaking bed;
Karanja’s fingers touching Mumbi everywhere; their heavy breath merging into one – and, oh, Lord, the sighs, those sighs! He went through a long, continuous shuddering, then tottered towards a small tree by the road and held on to it. But the images did not stop corroding his mind. Karanja on top of Mumbi. He found himself dwelling on irrelevant details, worrying himself, for instance, over whether Mumbi had whimpered with pleasure at the orgasm…. Before he could finish the details of the scene, he groaned and emitted a hoarse cry. He let go the tree. He ran down the street towards his mother’s hut. The woman who had sighed under Karanja’s sweating body could not live. Passers-by would look at him once and quickly clear out of the way. Gikonyo ran on. He would kill her. He would strangle Mumbi. The distance was too long. His imagination had shot ahead; Mumbi was gasping for mercy, saliva flowed out of her mouth, her eyes bobbed out. But fate lay in his way. The hut was locked. Perhaps they had locked themselves inside. He threw his weight against the door, shouting: ‘Open the door. Open the door you who auction your bodies on the market.’ The door did not open. He gathered force and crushed into it again and again. Suddenly the wooden door gave way. Gikonyo fell on to the floor and hit his head against the hearthstone. Foam tossed from the sides of his mouth. For a time the carpenter made incoherent noises through the foam, ending in one prolonged moan: ‘God, oh, oh, God, my God.’

Gikonyo could never remember in detail his experience on the first few days of his return home. Everything remained like a misty dream and he found it difficult to tell Mugo a coherent account of what really happened. Again he groped for words and occasionally threw his despairing arms in the air.

‘Anyway, I must have gone mad. I suppose there is nothing so painful as finding that a friend, or a man you always trusted, has betrayed you. Anyway, when later I woke up, I found myself in bed and a blanket covered me. The oil-lamp, just like this one here, was burning feebly, like something diseased, know what I mean? Even the smell of everything reminded you of a scene in hospital. My mother sat beside the bed. Mumbi stood a few feet away. I could not see her face clearly, but I thought she had been crying. For a moment, a minute, you might say, something rippled in my heart. Mumbi, the woman I knew, could not let Karanja into her bed. She was the same as I had left her. Then I saw the child. And I knew that what I had thought impossible had happened. My teeth started clattering and I shuddered all over, as if I had caught a cold and a fever, malaria. Yet now I had lost all desire to kill her. It was then that I made a decision: I would never talk about the child. I would continue life as if nothing had happened. But I would never enter Mumbi’s bed. What more was there for me to do but to give myself wholly to work, hard work?’ Gikonyo searched Mugo’s face. He could not discern anything. The silence made him uncomfortable. It seemed as if the whole thing was a repetition of a familiar scene.

‘Yes … I gave myself, heart and body, to work,’ he said again. And still Mugo did not say anything, Gikonyo felt vaguely disappointed.
The weight had been lifted. But guilt of another kind was creeping in. He had laid himself bare, naked, before Mugo. Mugo must be judging him. Gikonyo felt the discomfort of a man standing before a puritan priest. Suddenly he wanted to go, get away from Mugo, and cry his shame in the dark.

‘I must go,’ he said, rising to his feet. He went out into the night. His heart’s palpitations frightened him. He was scared of facing Mumbi, of being kept awake by the steps on the pavement. Darkness pressed him on every side as he hastened towards home that was no home. Mugo’s purity, Mumbi’s unfaithfulness, everything had conspired to undermine his manhood, his faith in himself, and accentuate his shame at being the first to confess the oath in Yala Camp.

As soon as Gikonyo had gone, Mugo rushed to the door, flung it open and cried out: Come back. He waited for an answer, and getting no response went back and sat down to think. His mind lightly hopped from one episode to another. Gikonyo had wanted him to say something. He felt he should have said something. Twice he had moistened his lips with spittle and cleared his throat ready to speak. But his mouth was dry; thoughts and words refused to form. What could he have told him? Gikonyo’s outburst against Karanja’s betrayal and his unforgiving anger at Mumbi had made Mugo recoil within. Every time Gikonyo talked about Mumbi and Karanja, Mugo felt sharp irritation as if acid was eating away at an ulcer in his stomach. He now shivered at the recollection. He became restless. He stood up and walked about the room. Suppose I had told him … suppose I had suddenly told him…. Everything would have been all over … all over … the knowledge … the burden … fears … and hopes…. I could have told him … and maybe … maybe … Or is that why he told me his own story? At this thought he abruptly stopped pacing and leaned against the bed. A man does not go to a stranger and tear his heart open…. I see everything … everything … he pretended not to look at me … yet kept on stealing eyes at me … see if I was frightened … see … if…. No. He recalled the agony on Gikonyo’s face. His voice had sounded sincere and trusting.

Mugo went out. Perhaps the cold air and anonymous night would
still his nerves on edge. A cup of tea at Kabui shops seemed the best plan. As he walked through the night, many scenes in his life flashed across his mind; he would be frightened, thrilled, repelled, etc., in turns at each succeeding scene. And strangely everything ended in last night’s saying from the Bible: he shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. The words tickled something in him, they disturbed a memory.

The memory was of a day in May 1955. Kenya had been in a State of Emergency for about two years. Mugo went to his shamba, another thin strip of land, near Rung’ei Railway Station. Then Emergency regulations and troubles had not touched him. Beyond the station was the tarmac road which went through the settled area to Nairobi, to Mombasa and into the sea. Mugo had never travelled beyond Rung’ei, to the settled area, or to the big city. Once or twice when he was a boy he saw a group of white people smoking, talking and laughing, while black people carried bags of maize and pyrethrum from standing lorries into the railway trucks. When all the lorries had been emptied, the goods train rattled away. Mugo had watched the scene from a safe distance. In after years, whenever he thought of a whiteman (even John Thompson) he always pictured a man smoking a cigarette and a standing train that vomited out smoke. On this day he had tied his shirt, unbuttoned, to the waist, so that the collar and the sleeves brushed against his calves and the back of his thighs as he bent over the crops. The sun burnt the bare black torso pleasantly. Light on the sweating body made the skin gleam brown. The crops – young maize plants, potatoes, beans, peas – opened out and spread their leaves to the sun. Mugo used a small jembe to turn the soil over in the bare and weedy patches between the plants, his fingers for earthing up the crops. As he disturbed the plant stems, the dewdrops on the leaves would break and melt away. The air was fresh and clear and sharp. The fields around, all covered with green things – long, wide leaves hiding the dark earth – appeared beautiful to look at. The sun became increasingly hotter; the moisture on leaves evaporated; leaves dropped, so that at noon the greenness had waned, slightly ashy, and the fields appeared tired. Mugo lay on his back under the shade of a
Mwariki and experienced that excessive contentment which one feels during a noon rest from toil. A voice, then he always heard voices whenever he lay on his back at rest, told him: Something is going to happen to you. Closing his eyes, he could feel, almost touched the thing, whose form was vague but, oh, so beautiful. He let the gentle voice lure him to distant lands in the past. Moses too was alone keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law. And he led the flock to the far side of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And God called out to him in a thin voice, Moses, Moses. And Mugo cried out, Here am I, Lord.

Whenever he thought of this day, he always saw it as the climax of his life. For a week later DO Robson was shot dead, and Kihika came into his life.

Mugo was in a feverish excitement when he burst into the teashop at Kabui. Previously the place was called
Mambo Leo
, but since self-government, the owner had renamed it:
Uhuru Hotel
: sub-titled:
Bar and Restaurant
. A group of men were shouting and singing at the counter. Other groups were scattered about the creaking tables. Mugo went into a corner and sat down. His head thrilled round and round: he was in a reverie, the ground on which he walked, the people in the bar, were all unreal. A minute, and they would vanish. Suddenly a voice rang out above the drunken noise. There was silence, profound in its abruptness. Githua on his crutches detached himself from the group at the counter and hobbled towards Mugo. He stood in front of Mugo, at attention, saluted, removed his hat and cried out:

‘Chief! I salute you!’ Githua exhaled a drunken breath, through his discoloured teeth. Then his posture metamorphosed into that of a fawning slave.

‘Remember us, Chief. Remember us. Do you see these tatters? Do you see the lice crawling on my shoulder? I was not always like that. I swear by my mother’s aged cunt, or that of the old woman. Ask anybody here.’

He raised his finger up in a swearing fashion and looked around the
place as if for witnesses. By this time people had left their places and crept near the two men. Mugo was scared, at the same time, was thrilled, by the unreality of the whole spectacle.

‘I was a driver – known from Kisumu to Mombasa. Me.’ Again he was the proud man, defiantly beating his chest, for show. ‘Money was nothing to me. I was negotiating for a farm in Kerarapon, near Ngong. At home here I had poultry – a lot – oh you should have seen the eggs. Waiter – give us a drink here – bring a drink for the Chief. Before the Emergency I could have bought the whole bar.’

Although people were used to Githua’s bragging, nobody laughed. They listened to him seriously at one time nodding or shaking their heads in sympathy with the tears in Githua’s voice. Mugo said he wanted nothing to drink. People started talking about Kenya, the land of conflicts. ‘The Emergency hit us hard,’ some were saying.