The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (22 page)

She waited for an explanation, I did not see the need to give her one.

THIRTEEN.

Njoroge called early one morning and said, Vic, if you are free this morning I’d like you to witness something important.

What?

Meet me in the city at nine, will you?

We agreed to meet downstairs outside Papa’s office building, next to the motorcycle repair shop, and when I reached there with my father at a little past nine, Njoroge was waiting for me impatiently. He shook hands with Papa and then the two of us set off at a pace. He was wearing his grey jacket, with a red shirt, but no tie today. It was a chilly morning.

Where to? I asked.

Uhuru Park, he replied. There’s a meeting there of former freedom fighters—Mau Mau, as they used to be called. You will see them up close! In fact, this is your chance to walk up to them and shake their hands! You know they’ve been coming
out of the forest and surrendering. The problem the government faces is how to resettle them.

My noncommittal silence, as I struggled to keep pace with him, was not the response he’d expected, and he added forcefully, It’s a historic occasion, Vic. These people fought for our independence.

These were still the early days of our reunion. We were still rediscovering each other. His phone call earlier had reminded me of how he’d beckon at me from outside our back door in Nakuru and take me to share a secret for my ears only, how he’d taken me once to the Mau Mau oathing site behind our house to swear loyalty to Jomo and the cause of freedom. That was the day we had ritually mixed our blood.

We cut past the city market to Kenyatta Avenue and proceeded along it toward Uhuru Park, which lay on the other side of the city’s highway. At a lull in the traffic, we trotted across the six lanes of the highway and into the park.

There, said Njoroge, pointing with a finger in the direction we were headed.

In the centre of the park stood gathered a densely packed crowd of men. Behind them, some hundred yards away, had gathered a row of curious bystanders checked by a cordon of a few policemen, who allowed us through merely by our looks. Njoroge and I joined the inner crowd at its edge, but we were a distraction for our neighbours, and spaces gradually opened up before us and we found ourselves nudged forward to the front, where we were deemed to belong.

A few of them still in the thick spidery dreadlocks from their previous lives, one or two draped in a beloved animal skin or a greatcoat, some sporting beards, and all poor and dishevelled and dusty as hobos, the onetime Mau Mau amongst whom we stood looked listless, disgruntled, and weary. They had come here, away from the footlights of Parliament, to meet the Minister for Land Settlement, who had come provided with a padded chair for his ample bottom. He had not asked them to
sit, and so they stood before him in a congregation; in any case the ground was damp from early morning rain. The minister—boss of my boss, Njoroge called him—was a round-faced man in a three-piece suit, flanked by assistants. At a spot a few feet to his left, spokesmen of the former fighters came forward, one by one, to deliver a short speech venting their grievances. They had only recently walked out of the forest, members of two gangs, having deposited their weapons at the Nyeri police station, and now they wanted to know where was the reward they had been promised when they left everything behind to go fight for freedom.

We are poor and despised, our land was taken away, confiscated by the Bilitis, the British, given to the Humungati, the dreaded Home Guard, as payment to hunt and kill us; now where is the compensation promised to us, where are the European farms we were told would be ours after uhuru, where are the big houses, where is the wealth?…

They couldn’t have seemed more irrelevant or sounded more naïve.

At the artificial lake to our right, reflecting a deep copper sulphate blue, a few children ran about under the watchful eyes of their minders, their sharp bright voices just audible where we stood. Skirting the park along one side, lines of automobiles ran smoothly on the Uhuru Highway like columns of ants, breaking up at the nodular crowded roundabouts and then reconverging and moving along. Roads left these nodes for the hub of the city—from where, in the distance, the clock tower of the yellow and brown Parliament building indicated the time as a little past ten. In the opposite direction, tall orange Nandi flame and broad yellow cassia trees and multicoloured bougainvillea bushes lined the avenues that rose gently toward the green suburbs of Ngong and Hurlingham, with their cosy colonial bungalows nestled neatly behind hedgerows. This was beautiful Nairobi, it was an African city now.

The bystanders in the distance, beyond the police cordon, watched the proceedings in silent amazement; even the minister
looked a bit cowed in the presence of these mostly middle-aged retired guerrillas who had once given up all to live in the forests, to rule the nights, to draw blood and terrorize in the name of freedom, and to suffer and risk death for themselves; who with homemade guns and machetes had sorely tested the military might of the British, thus hastening independence. It did feel awesome standing among them; it was impossible not to let the mind roam away from the issue at hand, not to stare at this one and that one and wonder what kind of men they were. But they did not look like heroes now; they were here to plead.

A strange, dry musty odour took to the air from this shiftless crowd. Most of the men, their clothes, had not been washed in days and weeks. They scratched themselves, drew patterns on the ground with their feet in irritation, emitted throaty Kikuyu interjections that sounded like Hear, hear. They did not look very hopeful.

I looked at Njoroge beside me, wondering how hopeful he felt for them. I saw sympathy in his face, and admiration. But even then, as a young student not wise to politics, I couldn’t help feeling that my friend was as naïve as the fighters he admired.

Some of the intransigent among the former Mau Mau had resorted to banditry in the townships and when captured had been sentenced to heavy jail terms, ironically by the same judges who would pronounce similar harsh punishments on suspected Mau Mau before independence. Not long ago Mau Mau General Mwariama had been sentenced to a stiff jail term for brandishing a sword stick and causing disturbance; General Baimunge was captured and paraded naked in Meru township. Such news reached our bustling, euphoric capital as a curiosity from the townships. There was grudging respect but not much sympathy for Mau Mau who sought compensation and recognition as heroes of the nation; this was a time of reconciliation and progress, we had been told, a time of forgetting the past, not picking at it.

And yet now a spectre from my own past had stood up, was speaking at me—

The man was small, thin, and wiry, with a deeply lined black face, a thin mat of grey hair; he wore black trousers and a grey tweed jacket. His voice, old and crackling, rose thinly—

We gave up our property, we gave up good jobs with our English bosses who were generous for the times…Why do our politicians call us outlaws and bandits, aren’t we the army of the people? Even now we are ready to defend them…

I didn’t know the voice, but I knew instantly that short figure in the worn tweed jacket; the face, scenes from the past, emerged in memory like photographs from a developing film. The venerable-looking elder making his plea for justice was no other than Kihika, the Bruces’ former servant long wanted for their murders.

…we gave up all that for freedom, for uhuru, he was saying.

He gestured with his left hand and with his right clutched, close to his chest, a thick black book that I guessed was a Bible.

Steady, man, Njoroge said, gripping me tightly behind the shoulder, as if to squeeze out my vision of the man with a teddy bear in his hands, a tender look on his face, walking protectively behind the little white girl whom he would eventually slaughter. Was it so simple? I have never been able to see the murders as anything else. I felt dizzy from the blood pounding in my head; I don’t know if Njoroge sensed the extent of my discomfort, but he kept his hand pressed on my shoulder for a long time.

The meeting of the Mau Mau ended with a long hectoring lecture by the minister. The government is a just government, he said, thanks to the wise leadership of our President. All cases for compensation will be heard, no one will be turned away. But!—he raised a stern finger—unruly behaviour and banditry will not be tolerated, even from freedom fighters. Hear this!—the war is over, old grievances must be laid aside! Freedom has come and we must build the nation together! He concluded with the national rallying cry: Uhuru! Harambee!

The crowd echoed its response, slowly began to disperse. The Mau Mau shuffled away.

Some of them, however, turned and came toward Njoroge, to shake hands with my friend, the young educated man who was their saviour who would speak on their behalf with the government of Jomo. They took his proffered hand in both of theirs, or embraced him, and he introduced me to them as their friend Bwana Vikram. Kihika came by too, and I remember shaking a small scabby hand, hearing a dry raspy voice saying to me in English, I am pleased to meet you, sir…

I could not meet his eye.

Later, the two of us having strolled over to the Ismailia Tea Room downtown, I asked Njoroge, What would satisfy these Mau Mau?

Land to farm on; some money as compensation. To be treated like heroes wouldn’t be bad either, after all the hardships they’ve suffered…some acknowledgement of their sacrifice.

He paused, then said: I know what’s gnawing at your mind, Vic. Kihika.

What is he now? Where is he?

Njoroge took a deep breath, before replying,

He’s a counsellor to the fighters and their spokesman. He is an elder of the church and has been negotiating between them and the government. Those people we saw today, they came out of the forest and all surrendered to him a few days ago. He is indispensable.

They are evil, those who kill children!

I spoke this with a vehemence and a breaking voice that surprised even me, and Njoroge gave a start.

Your grandfather Mwangi said that, I said to him more calmly.
They are evil, those who kill children.

And those who go about killing grandfathers?—his voice gruff, flat. It was war, Vic, innocent people die in war, everywhere. We should leave the excesses of the past behind us, that’s
what Jomo has said. He has forgiven even those who put him in prison. We can’t keep on grieving the past, for God’s sake!

I know that well, Njo. It’s only that I can’t always keep those other images out of my mind.

Look around you, Vic, it’s all different now.

As if to comply, we both let our eyes wander around the restaurant in silence. The tables were filling up, as noon approached; waiters hurried in between them with plates of hot snacks and lunches. The smell of steaming rice and spicy curry filled the air. Mr. Mithoo, the owner, stood behind the till, unshaved, owl-like in thick round glasses. The Ismailia was a modest place with good basic fare and because it was so centrally placed, just outside the university area at the intersection of busy Government and River Roads, it was a favourite snacking place for students. Soon a group of them arrived and joined us, including an American couple known to be doing research on the freedom struggle, and the daily session of potato pakoda and politics began. Should Kenyatta be President for life? Whither the East African federation? The United States of Africa? Was socialism a good thing for a poor country? For a developing nation, was China a better model or India?

The clamorous crowd at our table had grown to two deep, when Njoroge, noticing my discomfiture, said, Do you want to go? I nodded and we left.

I am not much for politics, I confessed to him once we were outside.

As I’m noticing, he said. I should have remembered. I hadn’t realized that those events in Nakuru…I’m sorry, Vic, I didn’t know they still meant so much to you. I guess we never had a chance to talk about them. To me the Mau Mau murders were reprehensible—they were not many to begin with—but I always knew that they were for a cause and necessary, and that my people had suffered. But we must leave the past behind us.

We all carry the past inside us in some way, Njo, I said. We can’t help it.

He didn’t reply. What I meant, and he must have known, was that he too carried that past inside him, as did Deepa; how else could they have sparked off their relationship so easily, after all these years?

But Njo, Deepa told him pointedly once. You must have come to Nairobi a dozen times—Alliance High is so nearby!—and you didn’t look us up? Or perhaps you already knew where we were, you had seen us!

He returned a grin, told her: Sometimes near Eastleigh I would look at the Indian girls walking home from school, with their long pigtails, in their school skirts and blouses, and tell myself, Now perhaps that one is Deepa; or perhaps she is that other one! Lord forbid, she could be the fat one with glasses—how she loved to eat gulab jamuns!—or she could be the buck-toothed one like a rabbit! And each time I came to the city, I would be looking at girls a little older than the time before. Because I was getting older and I knew you were too! And so was Vic!