Petals of Blood (35 page)

‘Be reasonable, now, Mr Munira. Here you have a cell, well, a room to yourself. You have an open courtyard. You can walk about or sleep or write. Nobody interferes with you. Look at the other side of this partition. All those newly arrested, all those remanded are put there. They share cells, sometimes four or five or ten in one cell. Not even as big as yours. Last night two young fellows, totos I would say, well, thugs. They were brought in. Would you have liked that kind of company? I am not suggesting that you are in prison, arrested, or remanded. Only . . . well . . . Chui, Kimeria and Mzigo were such important people. VIPs. It will take us years before we can get their likes. So wealthy. Millionaires. Imagine. African Delameres. Did you
ever visit the scene of the arson? Of course you couldn’t have. It was terrible . . . terrible . . . Mr Munira, between you and me it was not a case of robbery or attempted robbery. There’s more to it than meets the eye. The police must leave no stone unturned. And this Inspector Godfrey . . . so famous . . . a bit odd . . . I mean his methods . . . like now . . . He never leaves the office . . . reads . . . reads. . . .’

‘I don’t want your theories. I just want to speak to Inspector Godfrey. You are only a jailer. Both you and I are in prison. Well, everybody is in prison . . .’

‘Mr Munira. But you chose to be confined here! You wanted to write down truth. You are a big man yourself. A teacher. A man of God. You ought to be sympathetic. Imagine. It might have been you. Well, it might be you next time. Mr Munira, prevention is better than cure.’

Munira laughed. Uneasily.

‘You are too talkative. But look. I don’t even have clothes into which I can change. You came for me in the morning. You said:
It’s nothing much, Mr Munira, just routine questioning: we have nothing against you.
Now you don’t even give me a newspaper . . .’

‘A newspaper, Mr Munira? But you have not asked for it. I am under instruction from Inspector Godfrey himself to supply you with whatever you need. Ask and it shall be given, that kind of thing. I will go just now and get you one, Mr Munira. Only I must lock this gate. But don’t take it ill. I am not your jailer. I am only waiting on you.’

Munira watched him lock the heavy iron gate. He had felt better talking with him. But now the panic of the night returned. He almost called him back. For it was as if, now, his last human contact had deserted him, and he was alone with the unresolved question . . . suppose . . . suppose this law is not there . . . He walked away from the gate and sat by the barbed wire that divided his yard from the others. He felt sleep steal on him. He readied himself to submit, hopefully. Suddenly he heard voices coming from the other side and his heart leapt a bit with pleasure. At first the voices were a little distant and a little vague, but after a while he could follow the conversation. He looked in that direction. Their backs were turned to him. So he just listened.

They were telling their story, maybe to a third person, probably their warder, or they were simply reliving their experience, uncaring, daring the warder or the listener to reveal it outside those walls. In court they would certainly deny it. They laughed at one another, laughed at their earlier declaration of innocence before the resident magistrate at Ilmorog. The two had been arrested trying to rob the Ilmorog branch of the African Economic Bank. They seemed proud of this as of their other exploits and their hide and hope-not-to-be-found games with the law.

The voices were vaguely familiar to Munira. But he could not place them. He wished they would turn their faces toward him. They went on talking and laughing as if they had not a care in the world, as if the whole thing was a game with certain rules, and except for the ‘traitor’ they were not bitter with anybody or anything else.

The policeman came back and brought him a copy of the
Sunday Mouthpiece
. Munira simply looked at him: he was not any longer interested in reading. What did it matter whether one read or not? But he took the paper all the same and idly flipped through the pages. He sat up and stared at banner headlines on the fourth page.
Murder in Ilmorog. Foul play suspected. Political motivation?
The headline, as it turned out, was more dramatic than the story which followed. The news aspects of the incident would of course have been exhausted by the national dailies, especially the more sensational
Daily Mouthpiece
, Munira reflected, and hence the speculation without evidence. So that was the source of the policeman’s theories. He quickly glanced up at the policeman who was eyeing him from the gate, and resumed his reading. The feature column was more interesting. The writer, after giving brief life histories of Chui, Mzigo and Kimeria, described them as three well-known nationalist fighters for political, educational, and above all, economic freedom for Africans. Their ownership and management of Theng’eta Breweries & Enterprises Ltd, which had brought happiness and prosperity to every home in the area as well as international fame for the country, was cited as an example of their joint entrepreneurial genius, unmatched even by the famed founders of the industrial revolution in Europe. Our Krupps, our Rockefellers, our Fords! And now their lives were brutally ended when they were
engaged in a bitter struggle for the total African ownership and control of the same Theng’eta factories and their subsidiaries in other parts of the country. Negotiations for them to buy out the remaining shares held by foreigners were soon to start. Whom then did their untimely deaths benefit? All true nationalists should pause and think!

Below this were more tributes and denunciations.

But the one that most held Munira’s interest was another news item captioned:
MP to lead a Delegation of Protest
. ‘The MP for Ilmorog and Southern Ruwa-ini, The Hon. Nderi wa Riera, yesterday told a press conference that he would be leading a strong delegation to all cabinet ministers and to even higher authorities if necessary to demand a mandatory death sentence for all cases of theft, with or without violence. He would also seek the same mandatory death sentence for all crimes that were politically and economically motivated.

‘Speaking over a wide range of subjects, the MP called for a total and permanent ban on strikes. Strikes generated an atmosphere of tension which could only lead to instability and periodic violence. Strikes should be regarded as deliberate anti-national acts of economic sabotage.

‘Calling on Trade Union leaders to be unselfish, he asked them to refrain from demanding higher and higher wages without proper regard for the lower income groups or the jobless, who would be the sole beneficiaries of a more equitable reallocation of what would have gone into unregulated wage increases. It was time that Trade Unions were told in no uncertain terms that they could no longer hold the country to ransom.

‘Referring to the proposed delegation, the MP called upon teachers, employers, Churchmen, and all men of goodwill to join it to demonstrate their unity of purpose in abhorring recent dastardly acts which would only scare away tourists and potential investors. Even local investors, he warned, might find it necessary to invest their capital abroad if the situation were left to deteriorate.’

The MP was fond of press statements and government by delegations and petitions, Munira thought. He recalled the picture of the MP ten years back pontificating in a solemn suit and tie and then
dashing across Jeevanjee Gardens, abandoning all pretences to dignity, with a group of the city’s unemployed in hot pursuit, and he probably praying for a miraculous intervention. Munira started laughing. He laughed until the newspaper fell from his hands. He turned his eyes to the other side and he caught the three youths also laughing and looking in his direction. Their eyes met. He stopped laughing. He had recognised Muriuki. And so he, Munira, had educated Muriuki to make him ready for robbery and jails?

‘Why my sudden doubt?’ he wrote, answering back the temptation of the night before. ‘Everything is ordained by God. The vanity of man’s actions divorced from a total surrender to the will of the Lord! We went on a journey to the city to save Ilmorog from the drought. We brought back spiritual drought from the city!’

There was an element of truth in Munira’s interpretation of events that followed their journey to the city. An administrative office for a government chief and a police post were the first things to be set up in the area. Next had come the church built by an Alliance of Missions as part of their missionary evangelical thrust into heathenish interiors. Only that, for him, so many years later, this irony of history was just the manner in which God manifested himself.

2 ~ Even the rain that fell a month after all the charitable individuals and organizations had packed their bags and returned to the city was, later for Munira, the way God chose to reveal himself in all his thunderous and flaming glory. It was this way of showing that men’s efforts could only come to nought and could never influence God’s will. Only total surrender . . . But for Nyakinyua, Njuguna, Njogu, Ruoro, and the others who knew about Mwathi’s powers, the rain had clearly been God’s response to the sacrifice and it signalled the end of a year of drought. They heard Afric’s God wrestling with the Gods of other lands. They heard and listened in wonder to the Gods’ fearful roar and the clashing of their swords which emitted fire from heaven.

The whole school came out and in supplication to the heavens, sang with expectant voices:

The rain seemed to hear them. The earth swallowed thirstily, swallowed the first few drops and gradually the ground relaxed its hardness and became soft and sloshy. The children splashed their feet in muddy pools and slid smoothly on slopes and hills.

Wanja was possessed of the rain-spirit. She walked through it, clothes drenched, skirt-hem tight against her thighs, revelling in the waters from heaven. She would at times sit or stand still on her hut’s verandah and look, wonder-gaze, at her life in droplets of rain falling from the roof. What was the meaning of her life? Where was the continuity of purpose? Why should she go through life an unfulfilled woman? She wanted to cry for . . . she knew not what. She and Nyakinyua were now close, very close, mother and daughter more than grandmother and granddaughter, and when the rain subsided they would wander about Ilmorog, would go to the shamba to break the clods of earth and of course plant together.

In the evening people would crowd Abdulla’s place and talk about the rain blessings. Baada ya dhiki faraja; and Abdulla wished he could truly believe this. The older folk told stories of how Rain, Sun and Wind went a-wooing Earth, Sister of Moon, and it was Rain who carried the day, and that was why Earth grew a swollen belly after being touched by Rain. Others said no, the raindrops were really the sperms of God and that even human beings sprang from the womb on mother earth soon after the original passionate downpour, torrential waters of the beginning.

This waiting earth: its readiness powered Wanja’s wings of expectation and numerous desires. Feverishly, she looked out for tomorrow, waiting, like the other women, for earth to crack, earth to be thrust open by the naked shoots of life.

And indeed came the sunshine, and the rain stopped, the earth
steamed, the earth opened, and the seeds germinated, bean ears flapping free in the breeze, maize-blades pointing skywards, green potato leaves spreading out and wide in the sun.

Karega, Abdulla, Munira often met at Abdulla’s store. They sat outside, basked in the sunset beams over the new growth, warm bellies, drowsy heads, dreams over a Tusker beer, and their hearts would beat suddenly at the sight of Wanja coming toward them from the fields.

But brooding not too far below their tranquil existence was their consciousness of the journey and the experiences which spoke of another less sure, more troubled world which could, any time, descend upon them, breaking asunder their rain-filled sun-warmed calm. They did not talk about it: but they knew, in their different ways, that things would never again be the same. For the journey had presented each with a set of questions for which there were no ready answers; had, because of what they had seen and experienced, thrown up challenges that could neither be forgotten nor put on one side, for they touched on things deep in the psyche, in their separate conceptions of what it meant to be human, a man, alive and free.

Karega said to Abdulla: Joseph will get far. He is doing extremely well in school and we have asked for him to join Standard IV.

School had resumed almost as soon as the city crowd dispensing charity and promises had gone, almost as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind the kind of restless silence that is felt after an abrupt cessation of numerous high-pitched voices. Karega once again threw his weight into teaching, to avoid answering anything to himself, but the same questions came back, with greater unsureness than before: where, he asked himself, was the unity of African people?

There was a time when he used to be sure of things: there was a time for instance when he thought that contact with a loved one could solve everything, was the key to the world. And indeed in those days when his heart beat in rhythm with Mukami’s, he had seen a world without knots and riddles opening out, a world which, bathed in the floodtide and light of their innocence, promised eternal beauty and truth. He was soon to know, shockingly so, that there were those
who waited in shadowy corners to suffocate growth with their foul breaths with the fart and shit of their hypocrisy and religious double-dealing. But even after Mukami had gone from his life he had retained some kind of expectation, an irresistible need to have faith in at least the decency of those who had known suffering in the past, those who had heroically stood up to oppressive forces. The existence of people like Chui, even though only in the school’s popular lore, had strengthened his faith in deeds of heroes. Hero-worship of those he thought could clear the air of suffocating man-made foul smells had gradually replaced his earlier faith in the universal healing power of love and innocence. But in Siriana he had watched the transformation of Chui from a popular hero into a tyrant who thought that his power came from God and foreigners. Karega had gone though all these experiences including his fruitless search for jobs in the city and his even more humiliating venture of selling fruits and sheepskins to tourists. Why then had he not learnt from these? Why had he urged a whole community to undertake a journey which he should have known would end in futility and added humiliation? Yes, Njuguna had been right: they had all gone begging in the streets!