The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (47 page)

Why don’t we meet for coffee, Njo, I said, when he called to thank me for my efforts on his behalf. Deepa had apparently told him about my phone call to State House. A month or so had passed since J.M.’s murder and the turmoil in the country had abated. A parliamentary commission had been set up to investigate the murder. Njoroge felt safe now, he did not think he was being followed anymore, and he would soon go back to work. He was in high spirits. Yes, we should, Vic, he replied, let me call you in a few days. He never called, but he continued to see Deepa at her shop.

Fortunately for Deepa, her in-laws Meena Auntie and Harry Uncle were away on a world trip. But Mother was concerned. She had heard of the rumour about Deepa and “that Kikuyu.”

Is it true, Vikram? she asked me.

Mother, Njoroge has been through a difficult time—his friend and guru has been murdered. It’s a difficult period for the entire country, you know that. He just finds it comforting to talk to her.

But she is a married woman, Vic.

She is responsible, Mother, let her deal with it. I put my hands on her shoulders, looked into her tired face. Mother, she’ll be all right. Everything will be all right.

Hé Rabba, I hope so.

On a Saturday morning, a few weeks after I last spoke with Njo, the
Nation
carried a report that Njoroge wa Thuku, assistant to the late politician, would give the first “Celebrating J.M. Kariuki” lecture organized by the University Students’ Union. The lecture would take place the following Tuesday and was titled, “The Promise Unfulfilled: J.M.’s Vision for Kenya.” The report went on to say that the young man, educated at Alliance and Makerere, was well poised to enter politics himself.

I read this news item, short but boxed inside one of the inner pages, in my office at JQS Tower. The political tenor in the nation had so changed recently that it seemed there had never been a better time to speak out. But I knew, and Njoroge knew, that he was on reprieve from J.M.’s killers.

A little worried, I picked up my phone, called Njoroge’s house. The Bwana had just left, the house maid answered; the Bibi—Mary—was in. I said I would ring back in the afternoon for Bwana, and what was she cooking? Chicken, she replied, why don’t you come and have some? It was eleven-fifteen.

Njoroge came to Deepa’s shop at a little past noon. At half past, the two assistants left by the front door, pulling it shut behind them. Njoroge was wearing a polo neck white sweater, which she had told him she rather liked, and dark grey pants. He sipped from the Coke that had been brought for him; she chided him that the drink would do his toothaches no good, and showed him a new medicated toothpaste. He took her hand gently and she let him.

She felt an intense ache of guilt inside her; her eyes glazed over, withholding tears, holding his eyes. She couldn’t pull away from that warm, that rough hand, that look she knew so well and loved, and she knew she must.

Don’t take the risk, Njo, she told him, composing herself, referring to his proposed address to the university students. The police and GSU will be there, there could be gunfire—

They dare not touch me now, he said confidently. The public knows how J.M. died, they will not allow any more non-democratic nonsense from that despot in Gatungu. Changes are afoot, Deep, J.M.’s death will not have been in vain.

This was their private moment away from the eyes of the world; it was impossible to peep into the shop from the outside; and it is not easy for me to invade that privacy now, from here. She said later that they were intimate and close to each other, when hell’s gates burst open upon them and two gunmen were suddenly inside. One of them covered her with his gun, wrenching her roughly away by the arm, and the other shot
Njoroge at point blank range, once, twice, three times, and the two escaped through the back door to a waiting car.

Deepa screamed, loud and recklessly, missing an angry bullet from the escaping thugs, and people rushed inside.

She was photographed, her mouth open in a long wail of grief, kneeling on the floor of her shop, Njoroge’s head on her lap, his white sweater dark with blood, her raised hand dripping with it.

In that scene he was finally hers. But she who had saved him from the clutches of Lieutenant Soames and his police had to deliver him up first to his assassins before she could have him.

One of her shop assistants, it appeared, had failed to ensure that the lock had firmly caught when she pulled the front door behind her while leaving. The murderers, according to the police, had been loitering outside and probably planned to get Njoroge as he departed from the shop, but noticing the door not quite shut, they went inside to do their deed. It was not clear why they decided to escape from the back, where the getaway car had gone on to pick them up. Fortunately for them the back door was also unlocked.

Njoroge’s death did not raise the stir that J.M. Kariuki’s had; he had not been a people’s man, though he could well have become one. The police held one of the shop assistants for a few weeks then released him. The case remains officially unsolved.

I had always realized that Njoroge and I were essentially different; yet we belonged to each other, we had been nurtured in the same soil. We were drawn together when we first met as boys, and later we would seek each other out, with care and affection. I found it painful to talk about him. But he was embedded deep in my life and experiences. Deepa too, after that wail of grief captured so vividly in our papers, expressing so much so openly, did not much speak about him. I recall how he re-entered our lives, when we met him again at the Rendezvous after a full twelve years, and how joyfully Deepa
had rushed to him, Njo! Njo! She would blame herself for allowing him to be killed in her presence, and for escaping unscathed herself.

I was used to set him up, Vic, I was bait, she said once.

But it wasn’t your fault, Deepa, they would have got him anyway. You barely survived yourself.

You don’t know…I wish I could explain, Bhaiya.

That last bit of abstraction went past me. Her grief was understandable; but I could never have imagined what painful knowledge kept gnawing at my sister’s mind.

Using binoculars I have traced the trajectory of Saturn in the sky for a few hours. One more thing for which I am grateful to this hideaway is that it has brought me in touch with the sky and the earth, and through them, with myself. The moon’s reflection now is a shimmering stab wound in the dark water; there is a craft in the water somewhere, its motor emitting a low drone. The neighbour’s dog barks. The glass of Scotch in my hand has warmed, and there is a crunch of gravel which in my state I don’t quite register until it is too late. Sharp metal, as of a knife point, is pressed hard against the side of my neck. I twist my head foolishly to take a look behind me, and draw a painful stream of blood from my neck.

If I kill you now I would do a service to my country, Joseph says in his deep voice. He is obviously drunk. The thing in his hand is a three-inch penknife.

If you could have read my thoughts just as you came, I reply to him in my mind, you would probably have pushed that penknife right through and into my veins.

He staggers inside to the fridge and picks out a beer, comes out, and announces, in Churchillian tones, We will not fight with pangas this time but with guns…we will battle them in Nakuru and (hiccup) Nyeri and (hiccup) Nairobi, for we…we are the sons of Mau Mau, the true patriots of the land—

Seema hurries toward us from the side of the house, casting long shadows by the outdoor lamps, and says, Oh there you are.

The two of us help Joseph up and she guides him to her car. She returns to say goodnight as I put a wet cloth on my neck wound.

Are you all right? she asks. He came unannounced, he’s so very disturbed by the events in Kenya. He’s planning to go back.

He doesn’t know it yet, but we killed his father, I announce to her, quietly.

She doesn’t comprehend, shakes her head, and leaves.

I return to the silent summer night outside in which to confront once again my past.

THIRTY.

Goodbye my father; kwa heri Mzee. You depart like a comet, leave us fumbling mortals to manage as best as we can in the darkness. Those who follow you can never bear your glory and so its brilliance lies shattered in a thousand pieces. But me—you gave me the privilege to share your presence, to call you my father, my father, to experience your enigma and wonder at it. What exactly did you think of me? Once you said to me reproachfully, when I the outsider presumed to offer an opinion on local politics, You think we are simple, but we are as deep and varied as the forest. I often wondered what you meant by “you” and “we.” I never saw you angry, yet there were those who said your wrath was profound. You terrified us, but why? You toyed with me, you knew this Muhindi would never belong to your games; yet I know you liked me too, you would never have hurt me. And my friend Njoroge who is dead?—who first taught
me to utter your name like a prayer, to sing in your praise, you the Moses of Kenya who would bring home the honey, lead your people to freedom? What secrets did you hide in that forest behind that wistful smile, those deep eyes? Did you know he would die, my father, this worshipper who turned bitter apostate; or did you delegate measures that sealed his fate; or did they simply take matters into their own hands, Karimi and the others, and you looked away? I did not know you as a man, but as a father, a god. And as such I take leave of you.

He lay in state in the banquet hall of the State House, on purple velvet under the great chandelier, in a purple-striped black suit, and socks and sandals, the famous elephant-head cane under his left arm. No sinister telltale marks on the gold trim. At his right hand was his fly whisk, the symbol of a great chief. He looked haggard but seemed at peace, that forest that was his mind now quiet forever. I couldn’t help a smile, though. Even in death he was enigma and mischief: this was my second visit to see him; the first time, two days before, I had brought some Asian leaders to pay their respects, and I was certain that between the two visits the handkerchief in his breast pocket had been changed, from white to red!

As I was walking on Kimathi Avenue, having paid my respects to the late President this second time, as I approached JQS Tower, I collided into a rolling, puffing Paul Nderi at the entrance. Lie low, my friend, he growled breathlessly, and not without a certain conspiratorial sense of humour, beware the line of fire as the new regime settles in. He had been among that select group of politicians, the notorious Inner Circle which had schemed and plotted incessantly to restrict the presidential succession to their own members, or at least to those of whom they approved. Circumstances had beaten them. The old succession law stood, and according to it the leadership of the country had just slipped from their hands. The new President, called the New Man, was of a different tribe and had the support of the army.

But Nderi was influential and he would survive.

I had always been of two minds about him. I liked his wit and his energy. He was smarter than most other politicians. But he was also shamelessly unscrupulous. Mephistopheles-like, he introduced me to the path of power and corruption, and he dropped me when he needed a scapegoat and I was no longer of use. But I had survived, for which he grudgingly respected me. He was now one of my clients.

See you at the funeral ceremonies tomorrow then, he said as we parted.

I am not invited, I replied.

Oh. He gave me a brief look and a thin smile. We understood each other.

The city was full of dignitaries who had arrived from all over the world for the ceremonies. The funeral procession, with pomp and circumstance not before seen in our capital, would leave the State House bearing the flag-draped casket on a gun carriage and proceed to the Parliament grounds, the final resting place of the President, where he would receive tributes and a gun salute. It was a blow to my prestige, and a sign of uncertain times, that I would not be among the dignitaries to witness this farewell ritual as the country and the world watched.