The Flame Trees of Thika (21 page)

Tilly looked at me, and also at Twinkle, and said that she wished we had never kept her in the first place, but as it was, we would look after her. I was obsessed with the fear that Twinkle would be used for a sacrifice. She had become very bold, and walked in and out of the house with an imperious, self-confident air, picking her way like a queen. The Kikuyu said that she was very fat, and we ought to eat her. I knew that she was safe from being eaten by the Kikuyu, but not from being tortured and killed.

When I had cut my hand on a broken bottle, Tilly had sealed over the gash with some stuff that glistened like transparent silk called Newskin. That evening, the world looked to me like a smooth coat of Newskin painted over a deep, throbbing wound. The surface shone like healthy flesh, but just below it everything was anguished and horrible. There was the innocent goat, its life agonizingly torn from its tissues, and there was Wanjui, who could have been saved and comforted, helpless in the hands of the old crones, dying in the darkness of the hut; our lives went on as usual, and we could do nothing to alleviate all this pain. Next morning Sammy, who had grown sullen and almost rude, said that Wanjui was dead. Later in the day I noticed smoke coming from his compound. She had died in the hut, which had therefore to be burnt down, while her body was taken out into the bush for the hyenas.

T
ROUBLES
did not come singly to Sammy. Not long after this, a dreadful thing happened to his eldest son, a boy of circumcision age. Materials for blasting were kept under lock and key, and only Robin and Sammy were supposed to handle them. One day Robin noticed that some of the detonators had gone. Things were always being stolen, but not detonators, and he could only hope that some had been lost, and no one had liked to admit it. Sammy denied all knowledge of the missing articles, and after a while the interest died down.

One afternoon when everyone was dozing (even Tilly was indoors) we heard an explosion from the direction of Sammy’s huts and, after a pause, women’s cries and people shouting. Tilly hurried out, telling me to stay indoors, but I followed out of curiosity and saw a man and a woman bringing towards us, as it seemed, a pillar of glistening red, like raw meat. I darted back into the house and resumed the painting of flowers in a seedsman’s catalogue. Tilly was away a long time and looked dishevelled and exhausted when she came back, and her blouse had blood-stains on it. She wrote a note to Mrs Nimmo and sent a boy to fetch Robin, and then sat down and took up a neglected piece of embroidery, and cut short abruptly anything I said.

Sammy’s son had tried to beat out a detonator between two rocks, to make an ornament. One arm (as I learnt later) was hanging by a shred and his face was a red sponge of pulp. Somehow Tilly had managed to stem the bleeding until Mrs Nimmo arrived to make a more professional job, but of course it was a matter for a surgeon. This time there was no argument. The mangled boy was wrapped up and put in the buggy and driven to the Blue Posts, and Major Breeches, who owned a motor-car, took him to Nairobi, a journey of between two and three hours.

Sammy went to Nairobi about a week later and returned to report that the boy was alive but had lost an eye and an arm. An atmosphere that was not exactly sullen, but was not cheerful either, prevailed on the farm. Robin complained that people
skimped their work even more than usual and no longer sang when they cleared bush or weeded. Several of the regular and, up till now, reliable Kikuyu disappeared. Sammy said vaguely that they were ill, or had sick relations. It was curious how pervasive such an atmosphere could be. The air was bright and sunny, rain came when it was needed, flowers bloomed, work progressed, and yet there was something oppressive and uneasy. Hereward said that it was all imagination and we needed a change. Fortunately, one was in sight; Ian Crawfurd had written to suggest that, when his latest journey in the north was over, he should take the Palmers, Tilly, and Robin on a game-shooting safari.

‘Get away from all this pettifogging detail for a bit,’ Hereward approved. ‘Good for Lettice, especially. Stop her moping.’

‘Is Lettice moping?’ Tilly asked. ‘I hadn’t noticed it.’

‘Difficult country for women,’ Hereward said vaguely. ‘The vertical rays of the sun.’ He had taken to riding over quite often to ask Tilly’s advice. Perhaps he found her cheerfulness and energy inspiriting. Tilly never moped, and disregarded the vertical rays of the sun.

Njombo had now been back at work for some time and he, too, shared the general malaise. Now that we had three ponies, his job was an important one, for they needed more attention than mules. He had a real talent for looking after them, and was intelligent, so he was one of the few individuals, apart from Sammy and Juma, whom we looked upon as a prop and stay.

It was therefore very disappointing when one day he disappeared without a word to anyone. When Robin made inquiries, he was told: ‘Perhaps Njombo is sick,’ but no one seemed to know, and Sammy simply shrugged his shoulders and said that Njombo was as foolish as a chicken, and that others could be found to do his work just as well.

This was untrue, and Sammy knew it. Although desertion, as it was called, among the labour was quite common, and could be dealt with through the District Commissioner, farmers did not as a rule pay much attention unless it was on a big scale, or connected with theft or some other crime. But on this occasion Robin was annoyed. Njombo had a position of trust, and had gone off without even leaving a message. Robin sent an urgent summons
into the reserve, but nothing happened, so he rode up in a temper to see Kupanya. The chief received Robin with his usual bland courtesy and presented him with a chicken, which ruffled Robin further still, because he had forgotten to bring anything to give Kupanya in return.

‘I will send for this man,’ Kupanya said, when he had heard the complaint, ‘but it may be that he is sick.’

‘If he is sick then he should have treatment,’ Robin replied.

‘There are doctors for white men and doctors for black men. It may be that he has come to consult a black man’s doctor.’

‘Then he is a fool,’ Robin retorted, unable through the limitations of the language to denounce superstition and quackery, as he would have wished. ‘Tell him to come back at once or I will bring a case against him before the
D.C.
’

Njombo did return about a week later, and received in silence the dressing-down from Robin which he no doubt expected, and did not assimilate. He had lost weight, and looked a sick man. His return only seemed to accelerate matters. Quite suddenly he shrank, his bones stuck out, his cheeks grew hollow and his skin dry, as if something had literally been drained out of him. Robin said he looked as if he had been attacked by vampires, and Tilly dosed him in vain with Epsom salts, cough mixture, cooking port, and quinine.

Once a month, Robin drove into Nairobi in the mule-buggy to fetch the wages, which came out in little sacks of rupees lying at his feet. Such a visit was now approaching, and it was decided to take Njombo to the hospital. As he would never give his consent, he was merely told to come with us in order to look after the mules. When we reached the native hospital Robin marched him in and he was virtually captured by the orderlies. His listlessness was now such that he showed little fight, although he rolled his eyes in his distress. Robin explained matters to a European doctor, who said that he would do his best.

‘But don’t think we’re sure to cure him,’ he added. ‘There are dozens of tropical diseases we haven’t even names for, let alone treatments.’

I missed Njombo, whose fondness for the ponies almost matched my own, but noticed that Kamau was trying to insinuate himself into an escort’s position. He discovered that I was
collecting wild flowers and would appear with one in his hand and offer it to me hesitantly, perhaps thinking I was looking for a special kind. He was always delighted when I took it and thanked him, and pressed it in an old catalogue from the Army and Navy Stores. I was rather sorry for Kamau, no one seemed to like him, and Robin said he was a very bad clerk and almost certainly dishonest, and had sacked him several times. Kamau paid no attention and always turned up smiling in what he evidently hoped was an ingratiating manner, so he stayed on.

I told Kamau that Njombo had been taken to the hospital. He shook his head.

‘Njombo cannot get well.’

‘Yes, he can. The doctors will give him medicine.’

‘The medicine of doctors is not strong for Njombo.’

‘Njombo is like everyone else.’

‘But there are bad men, wizards….’ Kamau looked cold and hunched, as if against a wind. ‘Njombo was foolish to bring harm to Sammy’s son.’

‘Sammy’s son was foolish, to hit that thing like a cartridge with a rock.’

‘It hurt no one else. People saw Njombo digging up the stone…. But these are bad things. When the bwana goes to Nairobi, I would like him to bring me a watch.’

Kamau was more interested than the other Kikuyu in what we did, wore, and possessed, and wished to copy us; Robin thought him a thief. He refused to say any more about Njombo, and no one else mentioned the name. It was as if Njombo was dead already, dead and forgotten. It was noticeable about the Kikuyu that when anyone was dead, the gap had to be closed immediately, no one spoke the name – like a rent that is quickly mended, to make the garment look as whole and serviceable as before.

And then one day Njombo reappeared, his legs like sticks, very frail and hunched like a sick chicken. It was a wonder that he had managed to walk from Thika. His skin looked grey. He carried a note which said: ‘I cannot do anything for this man. There is nothing wrong with him except that he has made up his mind to die.’

This was a blow, not merely to the hopes Tilly and Robin had entertained of Njombo’s recovery, but to their faith in European
medicine, which they had believed fully a match for heathen superstition or toxicology. Tilly put him in her sick-bay and ordered Juma to feed him on beef tea. He had no will or life of his own, and refused the beef tea, and no member of his family came to nurse him. It was sad to see him, who had been so bold and smiling, reduced to this pitiable condition, like a blighted plant whose roots have rotted; and to be helpless to apply a remedy.

‘I don’t see how it can be poison,’ Tilly said, ‘because he eats nothing; the sickness must be in his mind. We must convince him that the spell, or curse, or whatever it is, is all imagination, and hasn’t really any power to hurt him.’

‘That is rather difficult’, Robin pointed out, ‘when it so obviously has.’

‘Only because he thinks so. It’s a question of faith.’

‘Perhaps the Church could help,’ Robin suggested. ‘It’s their business, in a sense.’

Tilly caught at this, and we all rode up to the Italian Mission which lay a few miles inside the reserve. Everything there was of the simplest - a plain mud-and-wattle church, an open-sided shelter for a school, a cluster of huts. The Fathers were small, bearded, dark, and always welcoming, but they knew scarcely any English, so conversation had to be conducted in pidgin Swahili. Although devoted, pious, and hard-working men, they did not escape criticism both from Europeans, who accused them of living at a level little, if any, higher than the natives’, of destroying African standards, and of teaching a creed almost as full of superstition and magic as the one they hoped to demolish, and from some, at least, of the Africans, who not only mistrusted alien teaching at variance with Kikuyu custom, but objected to the Fathers’ need for land. In order to support their mission, which was very short of funds, the Fathers had planted coffee, and perhaps it was not easy for the inhabitants to understand that these were men of God, and therefore entitled to plant their trees in an area that the Government had promised to reserve for the Kikuyu, and not to give to Europeans.

The Fathers led us into their living-room, furnished with little more than a roughly-built home-made table, a few camp-chairs, and several holy pictures and statuettes, and offered us
wine. When Tilly attempted to present our problem in her limited Swahili they listened sympathetically, nodded, and smiled.

‘We hope that you will come and drive out this bad spirit, like the pigs of Gadarene,’ Tilly concluded.

‘Has the sick man had the water of God?’ inquired the spokesman for the Fathers. Tilly was puzzled for a moment, but then realized that he referred to baptism, for which Swahili had no word - just as there was no word for Holy Ghost, which became simply the Bird, or for the Virgin Mary. She said that Njombo had not been baptized.

‘Then we cannot drive away the bad spirit.’

Tilly was indignant. ‘But do you not preach that the Word of God is stronger than Kikuyu magic?’

‘If God has not yet caught a man, he does not belong to God, he still belongs to Kikuyu custom. If the water of God had been placed upon his head…’

‘Surely you cannot say because he has not yet had this water on his head, you cannot help him?’

The priests sadly shook their heads. They were sorry, but firm; Njombo was outside their province. Only the sheep within the flock could be saved.

‘Very well, then: you must quickly give him the water.’

The priests exclaimed and gestured. ‘He must first wish for water, learn, understand. Perhaps in one month…’

‘He will be dead in a few days.’

They shrugged their shoulders regretfully, and smiled. One of them reflectively picked his teeth. A peculiar kind of white topee, quite round and with a flattish crown, was clamped down on their heads, and the toes of their black, cracked boots pointed towards the Heaven they served.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Tilly complained in English. ‘They won’t save Njombo’s life because he hasn’t been baptized, and they won’t baptize him because he’s dying. If
that’s
their idea of Christianity…’

‘I see their point,’ Robin said. ‘Unless Njombo really believes in their form of magic, it can’t save him. And he’s too far gone now to take it all in.’

Tilly was upset and thwarted, and had little use for the poor
priests after that. All the resources of our civilization were unavailing against the word of some obscure, ignorant, and heathen wizard with his beans, bones, and powders. She felt the humiliation personally, especially as Njombo was, so to speak, ours. He was under our protection and we had failed to carry out our part of the implied bargain; this was what stuck in her throat.