Green City in the Sun (21 page)

     A plaque had been erected among the roses:

     ROSA GALLICA OFFICINALIS

These roses, which came from the
gardens of Bella Hill in Suffolk, England,
are believed to have been first planted there
after the War of Roses, when Henry Tudor, in
1485, gave lands to a faithful soldier in reward
for fighting for the Lancastrian cause. To honor
his king, the new earl of Trever's Town planted
on his estate red roses, symbol of the
House of Lancaster.
Lady Rose, countess of Treverton, brought
these cuttings to British East Africa in
February 1919.

     It was on such occasions that Rose, like her flowers, bloomed: when there was pageantry and ceremony, when the right food was served, the correct protocol followed, and the proper people were in attendance. Then she opened up and glowed. She felt herself come to life, in love and loved.

     Valentine had invited only the best of British East Africa society to the celebration of their new home. Some were coming from as far away as Uganda, the Sudan, the coast, even Tanganyika, which was British now that it had been won from the Germans. There would be officers of the king in smart regimental uniforms, with ladies on their arms; titled personages; people with wealth and position in the protectorate; and those without but who were no less glamorous: the white hunter surrounded by legend, the brothers who had explored the Congo, a famous writer, and two screen actresses. It was going to be the Event of the Year, perhaps of the decade, and Rose, finding her place at last in this strange country, was going to reign over it all.

     She hurried now. She dug the earth with her bare fingers. The house! she thought. A proper house at last! No more tents, no more insects and lizards. A
real
bed in
a real
bedroom. One for Rose, one for Valentine. In these past months he had come to respect her wishes; that unpleasant business was forgotten. He hadn't approached her bed and most likely would not in the future.

     She planted the first rosebush.

     T
HE TRACTOR HEADED
for the fig tree.

     "Cut the bloody thing down," the bwana had said, "and then we'll be rid of those pestering women."

     Two strong Africans had sawed through the tree's ancient trunk; the tractor would push it over and then pull up the stump. Bwana Lordy wanted
the job finished by this afternoon. The
wazungu
were already arriving in their wagons and motorcars and on horseback; he wanted the polo field to be ready.

     T
HE SPIRIT OF
the river was angry. That was why young Wachera and her grandmother had traveled far for their water, rising before dawn and striking into the heart of an unfamiliar forest, walking many spear throws to reach the mountain slopes where a few creeks still trickled. Now they were in the land of wild animals. The two Kikuyu women were guests and had no wish to offend the animal spirits or the spirits in the rocks and trees of this place so far from their home, so they sang as they walked and left offerings of maize meal and beer along the way.

     The river spirit was angry because of the wall the bwana had built across its throat, choking it, causing the waters to back up and swell and grow out into a pond where never before had there been a pond. It was to take care of the people during the drought, the bwana had said. While the other clans died of thirst, Chief Mathenge's family had water. But this was wrong, the medicine woman had told her apprentice. The Children of Mumbi must not offend the spirits of nature to satisfy their own selfish needs. The river was being strangled, and that was why there was
thahu
in Kikuyuland.

     They carried large calabash gourds and sat patiently while each gourd slowly filled. Young Wachera grew sad as she thought of her husband.

     After the birth of Gachiku's daughter Mathenge had followed the road to the white man's mission, and there he had listened to tales of a miraculous god named Jesu who had died and come back to life and who promised the same returning to life for any who worshiped Him. At the mission Mathenge had been bewitched. He had seen the thing called a "bicycle," and he desired one of his own. He had ridden in a "motocah" and had fallen under its spell. He had been given charms called "coins" and had seen how they were more valuable than goats. He had been shown how to "speak" symbols that were drawn on paper and had been told that in this skill lay all the power in the world. In the white man's village Mathenge's head had turned;
he had witnessed the might of the
mzungu
, in his guns, his boots, his tins of food. And Mathenge had returned to his family by the river a changed man.

     "The white man has the better way, lady mine," he had said to young Wachera the night he left her forever. Mathenge had come to the hut wearing white man's clothes because the mission fathers had told him that nakedness was an abomination to the god Jesu. "This is the new age. The world is changing. Ngai on his mountain is dead; there is a new god. Shall the Children of Mumbi perish for not worshiping the new god and learning his ways? Remember the proverb that says the pretty girl walks past the house of a poor man. Will you have the other tribes of the world walk past the Kikuyu door?"

     Wachera had listened in respectful silence, her tears to be shed later so as not to shame herself before her husband. Little Kabiru, their son, toddled about, unaware of the great farewell being spoken.

     "I was made chief, lady mine, and it is my duty to take care of our people. Remember the proverb that says cattle that have a limping leader never reach the good grazing grass. I will learn the reading of the white man, and I will sacrifice to the god Jesu. The mission fathers showed me an image of the bad god whom they call Satan, and his skin is the color of the Kikuyu. They have shown me that black is evil, and I do not wish to be evil. They washed my forehead and called me Solomon, which is my new name. I am like the white man now, I am his equal. And my son here, who is called Kabiru for his grandfather, will go to the mission and will also be washed and will receive a new name and thus be the white man's equal."

     Mathenge went away for six passings of the sun and returned with the child, saying, "Now his name is David, and he is a Christian. The white man will treat him as a brother."

     Then Mathenge had said, "God Jesu says that I commit a sin by owning more than one wife. You defied me, lady mine, by not moving to the other side of the river when I commanded. Therefore, you are no longer my wife. I shall live now as a Christian man with Gachiku, and with Njeri, my daughter whom Jesu restored to life. And when my time comes to die, I will be restored to life, as Jesu promises."

     Afterward Wachera had clasped Kabiru to her breast and lamented as
if Mathenge had died. It was the worst calamity for a Kikuyu woman to be cast out by her husband, for then she was cast out by the clan and no longer had a family. Wachera wept not only for the loss of her beloved mate but for the emptiness of her womb in the years to come. She clung to Kabiru and wailed, she washed him with her tears as if to wash away the white man's baptism, but in the end, because it was the wish of the man she desperately loved, she called her son David. And when her hut was torn down a fifth time, she did not rebuild it but moved into the hut of her grandmother, where the three lived in love and mutual solace.

     The gourds were full; it was time to return. Because young Wachera had the additional burden of David, who rode on her hip, the grandmother carried more gourds, and so her load was heavier, what the white man would measure at ninety pounds. Bent in half and facing the ground with leather straps digging into their foreheads to hold the heavy calabashes in place, the two trudged in silence through the unfamiliar forest back to their hut beside Valentine's reservoir.

     T
HE LATE-AFTERNOON
air was filled with smoke as the men burned what was left of the gigantic fig tree stump; the river quiet was jarred by the grinding of chains and tractor motor.

     Wachera and her grandmother came through the trees in time to see the ancient roots, like the gnarled fingers of a protesting hand, rise up out of the ground in a shower of dirt. The two women stopped and stared. A team of ten men was hauling away the stump and filling in the cavity left behind. All that remained of the massive trunk and great spreading branches of the sacred tree were bundles of freshly chopped logs.

     Elder Wachera slowly removed the calabashes from her back. "Daughter," she said, "take me into the forest now. It is time for me to die."

     Young Wachera stared at her. "Are you ill, Grandmother?"

     The medicine woman spoke calmly but with an echo of fatigue and age in her voice that the granddaughter had never heard before. "The home of the ancestors has been destroyed. The sacred ground is defiled. There is great
thahu
here. My time in this world is over. Take me now, Granddaughter."

     The arm she held out was steady. Wachera put her calabashes on the ground, shifted David to her other hip, and took her grandmother's hand. They turned their backs on the Kikuyu men in white man's clothes who were chopping and burning the sacred tree and returned to the forest.

     They walked in silence; only little David, fourteen months old and unaware of the catastrophe that had struck, gurgled and cooed. Although she did not want to accept it, young Wachera knew that her grandmother was indeed about to die. It was the Kikuyu way not to bury the dead but to leave the body to be devoured by hyenas. A person must not be allowed to die in a hut, for then the hut was made unclean and must be burned; a corpse could not be touched, for that was taboo. And so the sickly and dying, while yet alive, were either taken or went on their own to die alone and thus not bring
thahu
upon the homestead.

     They reached a place that was uninhabited by people. The grandmother sat on the dusty ground littered with twigs and dry leaves, and for the first time her movements were those of an old woman. Young Wachera marveled at how suddenly her grandmother had aged. The tired joints creaked; arms and legs moved stiffly when only a short while before, while carrying the calabashes, the medicine woman had been as spry and nimble as the granddaughter fifty years her junior.

     Elder Wachera sat on the earth and stretched her legs out before her. "Soon I will be taken by the Lord of Brightness," she said softly. "And I will return to live with our First Parents, Kikuyu and Mumbi."

     Placing David on the ground, young Wachera sat opposite her grandmother and waited. Something terrible had happened, something the young woman could conceive only vaguely, something beyond her grasp but which one day she believed she would understand.

     "There is sorrow in Kikuyuland," elder Wachera said at last, her breathing becoming labored. "The time has come for the old ways to pass. I know now that I was born to see the sunset of the Kikuyu. The Children of Mumbi will turn their backs on Ngai, on their ancestors, on the tribal laws. They will strive to become like the white man. The old ways will die and be forgotten.