A Grain of Wheat (34 page)

The crowd of spectators was not so large as Gikonyo had anticipated. And, contrary to what might be expected on an Uhuru day, a gloom hung over the morning session, that is, over the sports and dances.

But suddenly towards the end of the morning session, something happened that seemed to break the gloom. A three-mile race – twelve laps round the field – was announced. Old and young, women and children could all take part in the event. This spontaneous arrangement (the race had not been on the programme) revived and heated the gathering. Everywhere people shouted and argued, exhorting one
another to enter the race. Whenever a woman came forward, she was greeted with appreciative laughter and clapping. The biggest clap was occasioned by Warui, when the old man, blankets and all, came forward for the race. Mumbi, who sat next to Wambui, wept with laughter as Warui jingled across the field to the starting point. Children strutted up and down, around the aged participants.

‘Let us join the race,’ Mwaura said to Karanja.

‘My bones are stiff,’ Karanja protested, shifting his eyes from Mumbi to the motley runners.

‘Come, man. You were once a great long-distance runner. Remember those days at Manguo?’

‘Are you taking part?’

‘Yes – against you,’ Mwaura said, and pulled Karanja by the hand.

Karanja’s sudden appearance startled Gikonyo who, to avoid looking at Karanja, moved to where Warui stood and talked to him animatedly. Karanja was also hesitant; it had not occurred to him that Gikonyo might take part in the race. Then contempt for the carpenter filled his heart; he would not give up the race, he resolved, remembering their old race to the train. The unfinished drama was going to be re-enacted in front of Mumbi, and only a few yards from the same railway station. Perhaps this time he would win the race and Mumbi together. Why else had she written that note, he reasoned with anxious optimism, as he bent down to unlace his shoes. Mwaura was talking to General R. and Lt Koina and seemed to be emphasizing a point with his right forefinger. The competitors, quite a small crowd consisting of women and men and schoolchildren, were now alerted. The whole field was suddenly hushed a second before the whistle went. Then a tumult of shouting from the spectators accompanied the pandemonium of the starting point. The runners trod on one another. A boy fell to the ground and miraculously escaped unhurt from the trampling feet.

Warui dropped out almost immediately. He went and sat next to Wambui and Mumbi.

‘You? I’ll never trust your strength again,’ Mumbi teased him. ‘You have shamed all your faithful women.’

‘Let the children play,’ he said, and slowly shook his head. ‘In our
time, we ran for miles and miles after our cattle stolen by the Masai. And it was no play, I tell you.’

Before the end of the first lap, many runners had followed Warui’s example and dropped out. Only one woman completed the third lap. It was at the end of the fourth round when many people had opted out of the race, that Mumbi suddenly noticed Karanja’s presence. Her clapping abruptly stopped; her excitement slumped back to memories of yesterday. The sight of Karanja and Gikonyo on the same field embarrassed her so that she now wished she had stayed at home with her parents. Why had Karanja come, anyway, despite her warning note? Or did he not receive the message? Seeing General R. in the race, she was reminded of what the General had said two days before this. The irony of his words now struck her with her fuller knowledge of the situation. Circumstances had changed since she wrote that note. Then she had not known that the man who had actually betrayed Kihika was now the village hero. How could she tell this to anybody? Could she bear to bring more misery to Mugo, whose eyes and face seemed so distorted with pain? She recalled his fingers on her mouth, the others awkwardly feeling her throat. Then the terrible vacuum in his eyes. Suddenly at her question, he had removed his hands from her body. He knelt before her, a broken, submissive penitent.

‘Mumbi!’ He gulped. He half-stretched his hands, limp, then unexpectedly hid his face in them. All these abrupt changes in mood and gesture deprived her of words. Despite her fear, she laid a trembling hand on his shoulders.

‘Listen, Mugo! I saw my brother die. The District Officer was there and the policemen.’

‘You have eyes and ears. Don’t you know who betrayed your brother?’

‘Karanja! You were there. General R. told us.’

‘No!’

She recoiled from him. In his hollow cry, in his look, she knew.

‘You!’

‘Me – yes – me.’

He had not looked at her. His voice had touched her, begged her. But she could not help her loathing and her trembling. She moved to
the door, away from the immobile figure of the village hero. She had no words. No feelings. Nothing. Mechanically but quickly she had opened the door. A dark night. Seemed she walked and ran simultaneously. The darkness. Not even the silhouettes of houses and things. Rain drizzling. And the voices of men and women who sang Uhuru songs reaching her in the drizzle seemed to come from another village, far away.

In the morning she told Wambui: ‘Mugo does not want to take part in these ceremonies: can’t we leave him alone?’ The knowledge she carried inside her involved her in a new dilemma; either Karanja or Mugo. But she did not want anybody to die or come to harm because of her brother. She wished she could talk to Gikonyo, who might find a way out. Why had Karanja ignored her note, she wondered again. Suddenly she grew vexed with herself: what did she care about him, who had ruined her life?

‘What is the matter?’ Wambui asked.

‘Nothing,’ Mumbi replied quickly, and started clapping, wildly.

As he ran, Gikonyo tried to hold on to other things; the half-familiar faces in the crowd; the new Rung’ei shops further down; the settled area across. Would Uhuru bring the land into African hands? And would that make a difference to the small man in the village? He heard a train rumbling at Rung’ei station. He thought of his father in the Rift Valley provinces. Was he still alive? What did he look like? He traversed the wide field of his childhood, early manhood, romance with Mumbi; Kihika, the Emergency, the detention camps, the stones on the pavement, the return home to betrayal passed through his mind in rapid succession. How Mumbi had dominated his life. Her very absence had almost unarmed him and made him break down. He angrily jerked his head, compelling himself to concentrate on the present race. He and Karanja were rivals again. But rivals for what? For whom were they competing? Karanja is only mocking me, he thought. He seethed with hatred as he panted and mopped sweat away from his forehead. He ran on, the desire to win inflamed him. He maintained his place close behind Karanja. His aim was to keep a certain pace, reserving his energy for the last lap or so, when he would dash forward, trusting his muscles would obey his will.

Mwaura was leading in the seventh lap. A few yards behind him followed Karanja, then General R., Gikonyo, Lt Koina and three other men, in that order. Most of the other competitors had dropped out. Around the field, spectators stood and cheered now this man, now that. Carry on, carry on, they shouted. Long-distance races had always been popular at Thabai. People despised short distances, regarding them as children’s races. Even those who had private grief against Karanja, the former government chief and leader of the homeguards, now lost their bitter feelings in the excitement of the moment. They cheered him on.

And Karanja was remembering a scene, long ago, at the Railway Station, when he stood there fighting his knowledge that Gikonyo and Mumbi were left behind, alone. How he had yearned for the woman! Lord, how the guitar had moaned for Mumbi in the forest! If only he had not been hesitant, waiting upon tomorrow, he might have won her. Later when he proposed to her, she refused him – with a smile. And that refusal irrevocably bound him to her. He waited for his chance. When Gikonyo was taken to detention, Karanja suddenly knew he would never let himself be taken away from Mumbi. He sold the Movement and Oath secrets, the price of remaining near Mumbi. Thereafter the wheel of things drove him into greater and greater reliance on the whiteman. That reliance gave him power – power to save, to imprison, to kill. Men cowered before him; he despised and also feared them. Women offered their naked bodies to him; even some of the most respectable came to him by night. But Mumbi, his Mumbi, would not yield, and he could never bring himself to force her. Ironically, as he thought later, as he thought now, she only lay under him when he stood on the brink of defeat. He had felt a momentary pang of intense victory which, seconds later, after the act, melted into utter isolation and humiliation. He had taken advantage of her. For this, so he thought, she despised him. He could not face her – not after that shoe which caught him in the face and provoked blinding tears. He had always wanted Mumbi to come to him, freely, because he was important to her, irresistible. And now he was running for her. Had she not herself given him a second chance? Her note had rescued him from terrible despair. The Thompsons had gone, the
whiteman would go. As long as the Thompsons were there, Karanja believed that white power would never really go. Perhaps it was because Thompson was the first whiteman Karanja had seen and met? For Thompson, the DO, appeared to people at Thabai, before the Emergency, the symbol of the whiteman’s government and supremacy. White power had given Karanja a fearful security – now this security, already shaken at the foundation, had crumbled to pieces. He walked in dark corridors. He could not see the sun. And then the letter had come. It warned him not to attend the ceremonies today. Why? Mwaura had already asked him and, in his despair, he had refused to attend. Her letter made him think again, throughout the night. And every moment had sharpened his curiosity to see Mumbi. Thabai was, after all, his village: who dared say Karanja could not go home? Somewhere, in a corner of his heart, Karanja trusted his physical power over Mumbi. Had she not, after all, mothered his child? He did not take her warning seriously. It was a woman’s way of doing things. And this view was confirmed when he and Mwaura arrived in Rung’ei, where he learnt that Mumbi had left her husband. Her message had gone sharp into his heart. All my life, I’ve run for her, he reflected bitterly. But only for a moment, though. He must not let such reflections deflect him from present victory. This was his last race. If he got Mumbi, his life would be complete. Uhuru and its threats would not, nothing would ever touch him, ill. So now he increased his pace. He must catch Mwaura at the tenth round. He must shake off Gikonyo, who stuck like a tick so close to his heels.

For now Gikonyo had passed General R. and held the third place. He clenched his teeth with determination. He knew that Mumbi was watching; he did not want to be humiliated, in front of her, by her lover. She had come to mock him, he thought. She had come to show that she was now independent. Twice he had gone to the place where she sat, to speak to Wambui about something, and he had resolutely ignored her presence. This had made him appear foolish, and angered him all the more. He saw Karanja increase his pace and he did the same. So far, nobody had broken the order established at the eighth round, but the crowd caught the heat and the tension.

Even Mumbi now forgot the burden in her heart, carried away by
the moment. She wanted Gikonyo to win, and also prayed that he might lose. She criticized his ungainly running, but followed his progress anxiously. She cheered General R. and Lt Koina who trailed behind Gikonyo. Carry on, carry on, her heart panted, as she waved a white handkerchief. Whenever Karanja passed her she felt embarrassed, and she could not control this feeling.

General R. ran with ease. Before the Emergency he used to run in all long-distance races. He had even developed a theory about such races. ‘They test how long you can endure hardship,’ he used to say. ‘You say to yourself: I will not give up: I will see this to the end.’ His body had a beautiful rhythm. As he ran, he rehearsed his part in the scene that was to take place that afternoon. He had been asked to speak in place of Mugo. He was determined not to fail Kihika, whose soul would reign over the meeting, in triumph.

His mind would not dwell in the act. Without warning, he was back in Nyeri. That was where he was born. School and learning: that had been his child’s dream, and expectation. He recalled how he used to do odd jobs and hired himself out as a labourer to cultivate other people’s fields. His father had graduated from an ordinary colonial messenger into a petty assistant chief. He contributed nothing to the home except violence. He even extorted money from both his wife and son. He was also a man of the horn and would come home drunk to drum the boy’s mother with fists. She whimpered and cried, like an animal in a cage. Muhoya – for that was the General’s original name – would cower or rush out. He hated himself for his size and lack of courage. But he would not cry like other children – not even when his father laid hands on him. One day I’ll get him, he swore inside. He never told his plans to anyone – not even to his mother. He would one day kill the tyrant – his mother would cry with gratitude although she had never complained about the drudgery around her or the fists that rained on her. As he grew, the desire for vengeance became faint. He postponed the day of reckoning to a vague future. But unexpectedly the day arrived. Muhoya, a young man newly circumcised, had come home and found his father at his favourite game. Suddenly the young man felt the moment had come. ‘If you value your life,’ he cried, ‘don’t touch her again.’ At first the father
was so surprised that his hand became numb in the air. Had he heard aright? He fell into a lion’s rage. He lifted his hand to strike the boy, but Muhoya caught his father by the arm. The years of hatred and fear made him delirious with a fearful joy. Father and son were locked in a life-and-death struggle. The son did not see a father, but a perpetrator of unprovoked violence, a petty colonial tyrant who would extort money from even his closest relatives. And his father saw not a son, but a subject who had refused to be a subject. But Muhoya had not reckoned with a slave’s treachery. The woman took a stick and fought on her husband’s side. It was Muhoya who now turned numb with unbelief. ‘He is your father, and my husband,’ she was shouting as she felled a blow on his shoulder. Muhoya ran out of the house. For the first time, he wept. I don’t understand, I cannot understand it. He was glad when the British conscripted him into their war. But he never forgot that experience. Never. It was only later when he saw how so many Kenyans could proudly defend their slavery that he understood his mother’s reaction.