The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (46 page)

A cool spring breeze blows in a dark and clear night; a low susurrus of waves fills the background as they roll and ripple onto the shore a hundred yards away under the cliff. And out here on the porch, looking out on the water as I like to do, wrapped in a Kulu shawl that is a present from Seema, I think of the country I have left behind.

A small war ravages the north, Somali shiftas ambushing vehicles and attacking drought-stricken villages; in fact, the entire belt of land from northern Kenya through Sudan and Uganda into Congo cries out in an agony of rape and abduction, war and pillage. An ethnic war, a politically inspired cleansing, threatens the Rift Valley. In Nairobi’s South Sea, Muslims and Christians, including perhaps youth from the MuKenya movement, or perhaps simply the idle and unemployed, of whom there are plenty, have gone at each other, burning mosques and churches. AIDS has decimated villages in the Lake Victoria region. Throughout the country rains have failed to come in their usual abundance, for which blight rampant deforestation may be the cause. In the midst of all this I made my millions; tens, hundreds of them. It would appear then that something is wrong with me. But that is too easy a judgement, surely.

I ask, would it have made a difference if I had declined the fortuitous role that happened my way? Surely there would have been another to fill my place. The game of money requires the presence of someone such as me, the neutral facilitator.

Does a bank need be moral? Or a croupier? Or indeed a genie of the fabled lamp, as I sometimes saw myself?

I have said that I could not engage morally in my world. Without actually looking for it, or even desiring it very much, for I am not one of extravagant habits or needs, I found myself on an easy path under the patronage of he who mattered most in our land. My friend Njoroge, on the other hand, had a conscience that engaged; but if anything, his life only proves the quixotic nature of that engagement. Our world functioned according to its own rules that no one—perhaps not even he who mattered most—could control.

Applause. Too long and strenuous a defence, you say. And perhaps you are right. You see, the woman who comes to talk to me in the evenings under the stars, over tea and whisky or wine, has found a way of gently but persistently needling me,
probing that cold hard carapace over my heart that I have come to see as my strength.

Perhaps Seema is right in her liberal attitudes; they may be simplistic but contain a germ of Gandhian truth. If enough people cared, she explained to me…Cared, and did what, I challenged. She blushed, then said cautiously: Cared and did little things that perhaps could add up?

Do I feel at last the stirrings of a conscience?

TWENTY-NINE.

The outspoken J.M. Kariuki, as predicted, was murdered. An unclaimed mutilated body which had lain on the slabs of the city morgue for at least a day was finally confirmed by one of his wives to be that of J.M. It was March, 1975.

The previous two days the man who was seen as a saviour of the country’s poor, the politician who had become Njoroge’s mentor and his friend, had been declared missing, and our newspapers had dutifully reported a planted story that he had been sighted in faraway Lusaka. But we all knew, all Nairobi whispered, that the Old Man’s emerging nemesis, the antagonist in the sidelights, had been got to by his enemies. A cloud of foreboding lurked over the country as it awaited news about J.M. The university students were restless, and it became fearsome for motorists from the suburbs to come down State House Drive, where the seething, angry dormitories lurked;
army and GSU jeeps prowled the City Centre and the slum areas. The body of the beaten and shot politician meanwhile had been discovered by a Masai herdsman in the Ngong Hills, where it was dumped in the hope perhaps that the hyenas would get to it. It arrived at the morgue badly mutilated; had someone from Kariuki’s supporters not checked at the morgue in time, the MP would have been buried anonymously and his disappearance would have remained a mystery. When the news of J.M.’s killing broke, as expected there were riots in the streets and calls for the President to resign.

There was a story going around, which is still repeated in the country to this day, of a secret meeting at the President’s home in Gatundu. At the meeting, according to this version, J.M. Kariuki, who had been the Old Man’s secretary once, was strongly told off by his former boss and idol for his scandalous speeches against the government; in a fury, the Old Man lashed out at J.M. with the top of his ebony walking cane. The top of the much-celebrated Presidential cane was a carved elephant head with gold trim; it knocked out three of J.M.’s front teeth. As he went reeling to the ground, the President said to those around him, Take care of him. Which is what they did. J.M.’s body, when found, had the front three teeth missing. And, the story concluded, the Old Man’s cane now had a telltale dent on the gold trim, where J.M.’s teeth took the hit.

What are you looking for, Lall-jee? the Old Man said to me in his gravelly voice, a twinkle in his eye.

It was only a week since J.M.’s body was found, and I had come to see the President on a mission. I had not seen him in six months. He looked gaunt, his cheeks withdrawn, eyes sunken; his sparse white hair looked woolly and unkempt. There had been a rumour of a heart attack, and a bad fall, and the newspapers were said to have long readied their obituaries, which apparently lay locked away in editors’ safes.

I did not believe the story of the President knocking off J.M.’s front teeth in a fury, yet I couldn’t help peering at the cane now leaning against the bookshelf next to his desk.
The gold band didn’t show a blemish from where I sat, the gleaming white ivory tusks of the elephant head curved to their ferocious tips without hitch.

I’m sorry, Excellency…I was distracted…

He knew well what I was looking at and why. Whenever he called me Lall-jee, I took that as a sign that there was a formal tone to the relationship that day and accordingly called him Excellency, which did not meet with the contempt he had thrown at it before. The President was extremely preoccupied these days, and this meeting had not been my idea. But, at this precarious time following the Kariuki murder and with the ongoing rumours about his delicate health, I had been sent by a group of Kenya’s worried business elite to affirm their undying support of him. As a token of good faith I had come bearing gifts—some local handcrafts, a cheque for a leprosy hospital, and a briefcase full of cash donations. I detested the crudity of that last offering, stacks of hundred-shilling notes, but today I was simply the messenger. He was in any case appreciative.

Sam Karimi nodded at me as I left the President’s office, and handed me another briefcase as a gift on behalf of the leader. It contained a large sum of money in Deutschmarks and a signed photo. The Old Man was nothing if not generous; even the humblest village petitioners would leave with something from this father, when granted their group audience. I glanced at Karimi and met his eye as I closed the door of his little anteroom shut behind me. He was a frightening man of few words, and he seemed capable of anything to defend the President, his Mzee.

Karimi turned out to be one of the last people to see J.M. alive; there were witnesses to that, and one of them was J.M.’s disciple Njoroge, who was frightened for his life.

On the Sunday of his disappearance, Kariuki had set up a meeting with Njoroge in the late afternoon at the Coffee House in the Hilton. J.M. was late, but even before he arrived, there
were policemen outside the Hilton, shooing off the parking boys and clearing the area of taxis. Njoroge didn’t give much thought to this police activity; it was not unusual and indicated perhaps that some foreign VIP had been put up at the hotel. At around seven p.m., J.M. hurried in to Njoroge’s table, looking extremely nervous. The Special Branch had visited him at home that morning, he said. As he looked around to call a waiter, a man appeared at the table and said, Excuse me, J.M., can we talk outside. Njoroge recognized the man as Mathu, the head of the GSU. J.M. got up, excused himself for a few minutes, and walked out with the visitor. Waiting for them at the doorway loomed the silent figure of Sam Karimi. Njoroge knew immediately something serious was up and he followed the three men, all of them in dark suits, J.M. in the middle, as they strode through the hotel lobby and headed toward the street entrance. He kept his distance, and just as he reached the entrance and passed through the glass doors, he saw a blue Peugeot station wagon quickly drive away; J.M., sitting between his two abductors, had leaned forward momentarily to look out the side window. The look of fright on his face was something his young disciple could never have imagined. Njoroge ran to a taxi and told the driver to follow the Peugeot now speeding along Kimathi Avenue, but the driver, after a look at the policemen hanging around the hotel entrance, refused. The Peugeot disappeared. Njoroge turned to the cops and asked them if they knew where Mathu and Karimi could have taken Kariuki. At first they grinned good-naturedly at him, as if he were a bumbling rustic who had lost his way in Nairobi; then one of them muttered to him to go home if he valued his life, and to keep his mouth shut about what he had seen.

He went home in tears, as the realization gripped his heart that he had seen the last of J.M. Kariuki; that terrified look on J.M.’s beloved face continued to haunt him. The man had been so confident, so fiery and energetic. He would have made a great President. He was a man of the people. But
this
President’s
men, a gang of thugs, did not wish that a better man than theirs should arise. He recalled the past murders of Tom Mboya, another populist leader, and the socialist, Gama Pinto; the shootings of stubborn Mau Mau generals; the numerous detainees in jail. Anyone who dared challenge Jomo’s authority had been dealt with ruthlessly. Now it was J.M. Kariuki’s turn. He was gone; his promises to the poor would vanish like vacuous dream clouds; and life in affluent Nairobi would go on as usual, in the well-guarded estates and planned colonies of Ngong and Kileleshwa and Riverside and Muthaiga and Gigiri. The wealthy and powerful desired no changes.

I’ve never seen him like this, Vic, Deepa said to me in my office.

You’re not supposed to see him, Deepa, not like that in private. People are beginning to talk. Mother knows.

He’s terrified, Vic.

Her voice soft and pleading. What could I tell her? To give a thought to Mother, who was sick? To her own family—Dilip and the children? He had come to her seeking comfort, shattered by J.M.’s murder and terrified for his own life.

He has a wife, Deepa, I said, you can’t take her place.

I am not trying to, Bhaiya. But he needs me, and I will not turn away from him.

She had agreed to meet him at Sanamu, the gallery café where in another stolen moment they had first declared their love long ago. In one of its quiet, partially hidden nooks, under the vacant gazes of tribal sculptures and masks, he told her what he had witnessed at the Hilton. He had lain low for a week in his home, before venturing out again into the city. He had sent his wife and daughter away to Nyeri, for their safety. He was certain he was being watched. As he sat there before her, his shirt was barely tucked in, his eyes were red, he had not shaved.

I should leave the country, go to Tanzania maybe. Come with me, Deep!

She gasped. I can’t go, Njo, can’t you see? And you can’t either. What would you do in Tanzania?

I could go to Sweden from there—seek exile—I know a few people in Sweden and Norway.

He had been the calm voice of reason when she had wanted to run away from home; now it was she who had to talk sense, while he, all his dreams shred to bits, desperately begged her to leave with him. The circumstances were completely different now, both were married, with families.

He knew it was futile, yet he persisted: They’ll come after me, Deep, if not today, then tomorrow; I am not safe.

Can’t you do something, Vic, she pleaded with me. Talk to Mzee?

And tell him what—Now that you’ve had J.M. Kariuki snuffed out, could you please leave my friend Njoroge alone, he has seen nothing, knows nothing, and will say nothing about the affair?

Yes, she said tearfully,
yes
! Something like that, can’t you do that for Njo? Tumhara bhi jigri-dost hai, Bhaiya!

She shamed me. Of course he was my dear friend; but he had been naïve like his mentor, and obstinate. My influence did not reach into politics. I feared that if I was seen to dabble in matters of no concern to me, I would lose my favoured status and earn the considerable wrath of the Old Man. Still, after my sister had left, I made a nervous phone call to State House and asked to speak to Sam Karimi. What is it? he asked gruffly. I told him that my friend Njoroge wa Thuku had been a friend of J.M. Kariuki but he was also a loyal Kenyan. I knew that because together as boys we had both taken an oath of allegiance to Mzee. He wanted to repledge his loyalty to the President. My friend was very dear to me.

There was a short pause after I had finished what was basically a plea. In effect I had said, as I was sure Karimi understood, that Njoroge had told me what he had witnessed, and he was pledging not to talk. I will tell Mzee, Karimi said,
having heard me out. I don’t know if he ever did. And if he did, what that meant to the Old Man.