The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (13 page)

But she must have told my father about what she had seen in the backyard the previous night. For that afternoon at around one, just after lunch, police trucks suddenly arrived, and in their usual loud and rough fashion the askaris began rounding up the servants and searching their quarters. Mwangi was again taken away with other servants. Njoroge had run away to hide in the bushes.

Many years later I reminded Njoroge of my aunt Nirmala’s reaction when she saw him that Diwali night.

He laughed. She was terrified, he said, but so was I. She was white like a ghost, her eyes big and round and her mouth wide open. I used to be frightened of Asians, if you have to know.

I protested: How could we have seemed frightening?

You were in with the whites, so you had power over us. And you are so alien, more so than the whites. We never know what you think. You are so inscrutable, you Indians.

I thought it was the British who were so inscrutable. And Mahesh Uncle?

The exception. As transparent as…as…

Cellophane?

We laughed together. Yes, Mahesh Uncle had been special, his emotions ablaze and on full display when we knew him in Nakuru. There was never any doubt what he felt about anything or anybody. But he also had his private moments, some of which he shared with Mother and some of which he didn’t; he had his dark secrets.

I had turned thoughtful and distracted, recalling my uncle. Njoroge peered into my face in a mock-curious way and brought me back to earth. Nobody’s totally transparent, I know, he said, not me, not you. It depends on what side you look at a person from. But one thing is for certain: You Indians eat all the time. And we laughed again.

That last comment is almost exactly what his son Joseph
has repeated on at least two occasions when Seema (Ms. Chatterjee) has been around. She stops by sometimes, when she’s finished at the Korrenburg Library, during evenings when she’s not at a meeting of the armchair sleuths of the Christie Club or volunteering for the local amateur symphony. Then food always becomes a major issue and suddenly there seems to be an abundance of it. She has taken it upon herself to bring or make food for us single men at every opportunity.

One hot evening, outside on the veranda, after a dinner of pilau, pakodas, and grilled fish, while we sip the last drops of our Kingfisher lagers, and the cats nuzzle against our legs, Seema asks, Who owns this house?

It was custom-made not very long ago for an academic couple who divorced soon afterwards. It is shaped like a hut—circular and with a high, vaulted ceiling—but is perhaps twenty times the size of a typical African hut. There are no interior walls on the lower floor, and the wood stove in the centre of the sunken living area should be a wonderful place to sit around when the cold weather arrives. This house has every modern amenity, with three bathrooms and four bedrooms, and Ms. Chatterjee is welcome to stay over when she wants to.

She notices, with a curious look at me, how I do not answer her question while skirting close to it, but she says nothing. We fall quiet. I wonder what Mother would have made of her.

I am aware that my evasiveness regarding her question is due to Joseph’s presence; those large, watchful eyes. He is my judge, I cannot help but feel, and quick and harsh too, in the manner of youth. I am, after all, one of those who made uncountable millions while our country slipped further into poverty.

Seema breaks the long silence, serving out the remaining beer.

A lonely and odd threesome we form, with our tortuous histories and migratory roots, in this little small-town haven, when burgeoning Toronto is just two hours away with its India-and Chinatowns and people among whom we would seem only too commonplace. There’s a savage war on in the
Balkans, and from that perspective my memories are of a time ages and ages away. A humbling thought: the First World War was closer to that time of my childhood during the Emergency than the present time is to it.

EIGHT.

Psst!

There was Njoroge at the open back door.

What is it? I asked, from the dining table where I had been confined with strict orders from Mother not to move until I had finished my sums. My glass of sweetened milk and plate of biscuits and almonds were beside me.

He beckoned briskly with one hand, the other in his shorts pocket. Come.

What is it? I gulped down my milk and, a little reluctantly, stepped outside. Homework was serious business with Mother. Only with education will you go anywhere in this world, she would say, advice that Deepa now visits anxiously upon Joseph.

Njoroge was leaning against the back wall of our house.

Hey Njo, you got no homework?

He did not reply but said instead, very seriously, How do I know you are my friend?

It was my turn for silence. I was too confounded to speak. His grandfather Mwangi was still with the police, and Njoroge ate what others gave him.

Can I have a biscuit? he said.

Grateful at this show of trust, I ran inside and brought out the two remaining biscuits.

I think you will betray me, he said casually, nibbling at the two biscuits twinned together.

No, I will not, I replied. But my heart sank with guilt even as I made that glib assertion. Hadn’t I belted out the Jomo song two days ago in front of my entire family, and didn’t Mahesh Uncle know whom I had learnt it from?

All those secrets I have told you, you will not tell them to anybody? Not to Bill—

I will not tell him.

Not to Annie?

I will not tell Annie. And Deepa?

He paused to ponder, then said, She is too young. Later, maybe. And not to your parents or your uncle.

I will not tell anybody.

You must swear.

I swear.

You must take an oath.

I will take an oath.

You must come with me and take an oath. It will be a serious oath, a Number Three oath.

Okay. I met him eye to eye, he nodded, and I too gave a nod in solemn confirmation.

He ran off to his house and brought back a polished brown wooden bowl. With it we started off toward the back of the yard, at the very end of which was a wire fence covered with a rough thorny hedge. The bottom part of the hedge in our neighbour’s area had been cut away in one place, and the ground there excavated discreetly to make a shallow and
narrow tunnel passageway, which was much in use by the servants to take a short cut without being seen. You bent almost double to go through this passageway, then immediately slid or clambered down into a dry ditch running alongside the houses, then climbed up again to arrive at an empty but wildly growing patch of land. Njoroge took me some distance through the bushes to a place where there was a large tree, some twenty-five feet away from the ditch.

He stopped and we stared at each other for a few moments and caught our breaths. We were both red with dust—our knees and elbows, our shirts. Mugumo tree, he nodded to it; it is the tree of God. I nodded without understanding but was intensely excited. Then suddenly he undid his belt and dropped his shorts. His underwear was a pair of grey cotton shorts, which he also dropped, revealing a curving black penis at which I couldn’t help staring in wonder. He gave it a proud pluck, making it jiggle, and then I too dropped my shorts and repeated his motions. We stood staring at our nakedness.

In the shade of the tree stood an arch, which had been constructed of branches and, away from it, closer to the ditch, lay sprawled the grisly remains of a dead animal. Beside the carcass was a stone, red with drained blood. A sickening stench suddenly became noticeable in that chilling air; perhaps the wind had changed. It was drawing toward evening, the sun abating. We saw two men emerge from the spot where we ourselves had come out, glance briefly in our direction, and walk away.

Come, Vic, Njoroge said.

We passed through that arch seven times in turn, going around and returning. Then I followed him toward the stone and the slaughtered animal, a goat or a sheep, its guts spilled out of its side, its head cut off and missing. The smell hit me like a blow, yet I persisted, and we knelt at the red stone, on which strands of brown animal hair were stuck. Njoroge placed his wooden bowl on the stone, then produced a penknife from his pocket, flicked it open. Pressing the sharp point into his skin, hard enough that he gasped, he cut himself in the
upper forearm, and blood spurted out from the small gash and dripped slowly into the bowl. The blood still pouring down his elbow, he motioned for my arm, and I felt the sharp pain of the cut, and my blood poured out to mix with his in a shallow pool in the bowl. Using a twig we mixed our blood, taking turns, and he said to me, Now take the oath.

I repeated after him:

I swear allegiance to our leader Jomo Kenyatta, the saviour, and if I disobey him, let me die.

If I worship any other leader than Jomo, who is the prime minister and knight commander of Africa, let me die.

If I am called upon to fight for the freedom of the country and I refuse, let me die.

If I fail to report any enemy of my leader and saviour, let me die.

If I tell the secret of this oath to my parents let me die.

If I tell the secret of this oath to the police let me die.

If I tell the secret of this oath to the teachers let me die.

Seven grave oaths I repeated after him, after each one rubbing my finger into the blood and licking it.

With two fingers we each took a pinch of meat from the rotting carcass in front of us and put it in our mouths.

Finally we daubed our penises red with the blood. We touched it to our eyes. Then, wiping our wounds with leaves, we tied them up with our handkerchiefs, put on our clothes, and went home.

My mother let out a shriek when she saw me dusty and bloody and almost fainting.

I was climbing a tree, I said to her, and there was a nail stuck in it. I refused vehemently to see a doctor, so she washed the cut with antiseptic, then applied a traditional dressing of turmeric preparation and bandaged it. The next morning, miraculously, the wound was on its way to healing.

When she found out that Njoroge too had been wounded by the same nail, she was thoroughly mystified. So if one of you gets cut in the arm, the other has to go and try it too? So what
are you, two paagals? One jumps in the lake, the other has to do the same. Like Laurel and Hardy, the pair of you.

Njoroge recovered without medication. Africans are stronger than us, Mother said.

From that time onward I carried a strange secret that implicated me in things I did not fully understand, and yet which I could not share with my family. This secret was a curtain that came between me and my loved ones, and there were times when I would feel intensely sad and guilty. I never told anyone about it, I write of it only now, in the presence of Njoroge’s son, who has dug out sweet potatoes from the garden and will roast them on the grill for us to eat.

The Mau Mau oath, as described by the colonial authorities and their informers, required participation in gruesome rituals involving acts of bestiality and even cannibalism. More benign forms of the oathing process have been described by some former Mau Mau and their sympathizers. The truth is complex and elusive. There has no doubt been both exaggeration and suppression in the published accounts. Historical veracity and the confidence to deal with it have not been strong points in our region of the world; the three-piece-suited African leader with a son at Harrow wants no reminder of the primitive processes that were sometimes at work behind the freedom struggle. The grimness of the ceremony undoubtedly gave it its shocking and binding value. Having taken the oath, when called upon to assist the freedom-fighters in any manner they asked, you had no choice but to obey. Of course you might be lucky and not be called upon for your services. But an oath once taken could only be revoked by a counter-oath—of which the government had its version, in which you swore loyalty to Queen Elizabth II.

When we were older, even when we spoke of the past, I never could bring up with my friend the subject of that oath he administered to me. In my inner being, though, I felt—and still do feel—that an offence was done to me. Through friendly
coercion I was made to participate in a private, debasing and repugnant ceremony. I swore to things I did not understand, I had to lie to my family, I had even tasted flesh, an act abhorrent to my Hindu upbringing. But I did not hold the experience against Njoroge; it was just one of those boyhood unpleasantries one has to face in school and college. We were only eight and nine years old! But from where had Njoroge obtained his inspiration for the oath? There was a rudimentary similarity between it and those Mau Mau oaths I subsequently read about. He must have witnessed something at that bloody makeshift altar he took me to. And Mwangi? It is almost impossible that Mwangi, or any other Kikuyu who worked in our development, could have avoided taking the oath. Was the benign-looking, elderly Mwangi, the wise and patient man, the dignified gardener, anything other than that? I mean, was he secretly involved with the Mau Mau, in its violence? I could never bring myself to believe that.