The River Between (6 page)

Sunday was always a busy day for Joshua. He conducted a long service, though Kabonyi sometimes helped him. But Kabonyi was a much less compelling preacher than Joshua, who seemed to preach with a conviction arising from deep down in the heart. Prayer and singing followed, after the service was over and still more meetings in the ridges; sometimes Joshua had to make journeys into the country, from ridge to ridge.

One Sunday he conducted a particularly long service. When it was over he felt exhausted. Only the week before he had been to Siriana with Kabonyi to discuss the recent developments. Siriana was far off and they had made the journey on foot. Now he felt so worn out, especially after his sermon, that he did not wait for the usual prayers and singing outside the small Makuyu church. He found his wife Miriamu and went home with her.

Nyambura, who never waited for the singing outside, was a few yards ahead. Muthoni was not there.

They came home. She was not there either. There was nothing unusual in this: Muthoni often remained behind chatting with villagers. Nyambura, however, knew that today she had not left Muthoni behind and she was surprised when she did not find her at home.

In the evening, Muthoni did not appear. Nyambura's heart beat fast. She became restless and walked about in front of the house, trying to sing but really watching for Muthoni. When she went back inside, her heart sank when she saw the calm face of her mother. Joshua was resting in bed. Nyambura was worried at heart and dreaded the moment when Joshua would ask for Muthoni. Joshua did not allow his children out late. He was now more strict because initiation songs were going on. He would not want his children to be contaminated by them. It was perhaps lucky that he had gone to bed earlier than usual.

“I wonder where Muthoni is?” Miriamu asked, slightly puzzled. She was a peace-loving woman and she never liked unnecessary tension in the house. Her injunction to her children was always: “Obey your father.” She did not say it harshly or with bitterness. It was an expression of faith, of belief, of a way of life. “Your father says this—” and she expected his children to do that, without fuss, without resentment. She had learned the value of Christian submission, and she thought every other believer had the same attitude to life. Not that she questioned life. It had given her a man and in her own way she loved and cared for him. Her faith and belief in God were coupled with her fear of Joshua. But that was religion and it was the way things were ordered. However, one could still tell by her eyes that this was a religion learned and accepted; inside the true Gikuyu woman was sleeping.

Nyambura kept quiet. She did not know what to say. Before she could make up a suitable answer her father called out for Muthoni. He always called for Muthoni when he wanted something. Nyambura and Miriamu looked at one another as if they had just discovered Muthoni was missing. Nyambura then jumped up as if going to look for Muthoni. But she only wanted to be away from her father's fury. Muthoni had not told Nyambura that she would go. She had just slipped away from the church. Nyambura, however, had not forgotten that morning scene at the river, even though it was a number of months back.

When she came back into the house, she found Joshua standing near Miriamu, glaring hard at her.

“I tell you again. You know where your daughter is. Go! Go out and look for her.”

Night was coming. Nyambura stood at the door, cowering there. The pot on three stones was boiling over. Miriamu went out. This is what it meant to be a mother. It meant bearing on one's shoulders all the sins and misdeeds of the children. She went about, looking in all the huts where Muthoni was likely to be. She did not find her. She came back and found Nyambura had removed the pot from the fire. Joshua and Nyambura had not exchanged a word. Joshua had not bothered to ask Nyambura of her sister's whereabouts. Perhaps his anger had blinded him.

He flew at Miriamu: “Did you find her?” Miriamu said nothing.

“Go back and find her. She cannot sleep out.”

Miriamu hesitated. Where was she to go? She felt that Joshua was being unreasonable but she did not know how to tell him, not being given to arguments. For the moment Nyambura experienced the torture of a soul torn between two loyalties with fear in front. Should she let out Muthoni's secret? What if Muthoni returned?

“But—but—” Miriamu was stammering. Nyambura could bear it no longer. She had tried her best to keep her unspoken promise to Muthoni.

“Perhaps she has gone to my aunt,” she timidly suggested. Better she had kept silent. Joshua almost jumped at her.

“What! Your aunt? To what? Tell me at once!”

Nyambura cowered under his outburst. But she showed hesitation and she kept off the moment of revelation by saying:

“I think she has gone to my aunt at Kameno.”

“To do what?”

There was no help for it. She looked at the door, ready to run out as she gathered her courage to say the one ominous word—

“Circumcision.”

“What!”

“To be circumcised.”

Before she could run out Joshua was on her. He glared at her, shaking her all the time. He was almost mad and small foams of saliva could be seen at the sides of his mouth.

“How do you know? Who told you?”

Nyambura was beside herself with terror. She thought that he would beat her. All of a sudden, Joshua released her. He let out a very small sigh. Nyambura detected in it pain and torment. She felt pity for him. Slowly he went back to the fireplace and sank down on a stool. He looked like a beast of prey experiencing defeat and humiliation for the first time. He realized that he was growing old. Then, in a measured, lifeless voice, he said:

“For once, I give you permission to go to Kameno. Go to that woman you call aunt. Tell Muthoni to come back. If she agrees we shall forget everything. If she does not, then tell her that she ceases to be my daughter.” He went back to bed.

Silence fell in the house after Joshua had announced this. Miriamu did not speak. She too had been shocked into silence by Muthoni's action which seemed to have no explanation and to stem from no motivation. She loved Muthoni and she did not want to lose her. She knew Joshua meant what he said. Tears began to run down her face. As they fell they shone, lit by the dying embers in the fire. Sometimes the fire would flicker, creating distorted shadows across the mud walls. The formless shadows moved and wavered in a mocking manner.

 • • • 

On the following day Nyambura brought the sad news that Muthoni had refused to return home.

Joshua sat still as he listened to this. Already he felt ashamed for being caught last night by the devil, unawares. He had now prayed, asking for strength never to be caught again in slumber. But this news was hard for him: for a man who had walked in the paths of righteousness. He remembered Job and thanked God.

From that day Muthoni ceased to exist for him, in his heart. She had brought an everlasting disgrace to him and his house, which he had meant to be an example of what a Christian home should grow into.

All right. Let her go back to Egypt. Yes. Let her go back. He, Joshua, would travel, on, on to the new Jerusalem.

Harvests came and went. They had been good; people rejoiced. Such rich harvests had not been seen for years. Old men sighed with inner fear as they witnessed the hubbub of excitement, throbbing through the ridges, making things tremble. Had they not seen such happenings before in their days of youth?

The elders, then, offered many burned sacrifices to Murungu. Who did not know what such unusual harvests portended? Who could not remember the great famine that had swept through the hills, spreading its fingers of smoke to all the land of the Gikuyu? That was before the real advent of the white men. Most of the old men had then been young. But they had never forgotten the great wealth and harvests that preceded the famine.

Chege could remember it well. He and many others thought that famine could never come any more. But it had followed in the wake of their thoughts. Chege, together with his newly-married brides and a few others, had left the hills along a secret path. His two wives did not survive the disaster. Chege was still young. He soon found himself another bride and came back to the hills. He came back to tell the people of the white man. But they would not listen. Even when the white man came to Siriana, people would not hearken to Chege's word. When Kabonyi and Joshua were converted, he broke off their former relationship. These Christians would not come to any good, he always said. He saw more than any other could see. These followers of Joshua would bring so many divisions to the land that the tribe would die.

Were these Christians not now preaching against all that which was good and beautiful in the tribe? Circumcision was the central rite in the Gikuyu way of life. Who had ever heard of a girl that was not circumcised? Who would ever pay cows and goats for such a girl? Certainly it would never be his son. Waiyaki would never betray the tribe.

In his own family, Chege had little to fear. His daughters were circumcised and all of them were well married. And Waiyaki, who had now been in Siriana for many years, was unlikely to be contaminated by the new cult. He was equipping himself to come and fight for the tribe. But sometimes Chege had qualms about his son. Would he ever fail the tribe? Would he ever fail the prophecy? At such times he experienced a sensation of defeat, of despair. Then his son would come for holidays, and Chege, though he did not say much to him, could see that all was well.

He persevered. He knew that age was now fast telling on him and that he had not many days to live and he came to pin his whole faith on the young man. It was as if his life, his heart, was being carried by Waiyaki and he feared the boy might stumble.

In this Chege did not see it as a contradiction that he, the embodiment of the true Gikuyu, should have sent his son to the very missionary center whose existence he had always opposed. But what did it matter? He had warned the people. They had refused to take up arms. It might even be too late now to take up arms. Luckily, there were other ways of beating the white man. For the prophecy still held good. In its fulfillment lay the hope of the people. He had learned a lesson and he taught it to his son. It is good to be wise in the affairs of the white man.

And so Chege waited and hoped. He watched Waiyaki, his progress and his behavior. He lived in the son. If the prophecy had not been fulfilled in him, well, there was the son. What was the difference? A savior shall come from the hills. Good. Waiyaki was the last in the line of that great seer who had prophesied of a black messiah from the hills. The boy was doing well at Siriana. He had early gone through the second birth. And this season he would be initiated into manhood. This would help him to absorb the white man's wisdom more quickly and help the tribe. And this was what he wanted; to see Waiyaki become a man before he himself died; then he could be sure that the work he had begun—no, the work begun a long time ago by Mugo—would not perish. You could more readily trust a man than a
kihii,
an uncircumcised boy.

 • • • 

The sacrifices went hand in hand with preparations for the coming circumcision. Everywhere candidates for the initiation were gathering. They went from house to house, singing and dancing the ritual songs, the same that had been sung from the old times, when Demi were on the land.

Waiyaki was one of the candidates. He was now a young man with strong, straight limbs. He did not like the dances very much, mainly because he could not do them as well as his fellow candidates, who had been practicing them for years. After all, it was soon after his second birth that he had gone to Siriana, and he had lived there for all those years, although he normally came home during the holidays. Waiyaki was often surprised at his father, who in some ways seemed to defy age. His voice, however, thin and tremulous, betrayed him. Waiyaki often remembered why he was sent to Siriana. But with years the dream had grown less vivid and less real. He saw it mainly as an illusion, an old man's dream. Yet he worked hard in school. He was now in the senior class in Siriana Secondary School and he was able to meet boys from all over Kenya.

Waiyaki's absence from the hills had kept him out of touch with those things that most mattered to the tribe. Besides, however much he resisted it, he could not help gathering and absorbing ideas and notions that prevented him from responding spontaneously to these dances and celebrations. But he knew that he had to go through the initiation. And he did not like to disappoint his father. For Waiyaki knew that the old man would die in that dream of the future which had probably been a real, essential part of his life. Not that Waiyaki disliked the idea of circumcision. On the contrary, he looked forward to it. It was his boy's ambition to test his courage at the ceremony. In fact, he considered Livingstone, for all his learning and holiness, a little dense in attacking a custom whose real significance in the tribe he did not understand and probably never would understand.

 • • • 

Above the beating of drums and jingles, shouts rose from hill to hill to keep awake those who might want to go to sleep. Tonight was the eve of the initiation day; it would see the biggest of all dances.

Waiyaki's mind was unsettled. He could remember nothing that had so shaken him since that famous journey to the sacred grove. But that was now a dream. This thing was real, was in everybody's mouth. All the time Waiyaki kept on wondering “Why should she do it?” And he felt a desire to speak with her, to hear it from her own mouth. Muthoni's revolt had rung from hill to hill as if the news were passed by the wind and the drums. Her name was whispered from hearth to hearth. Waiyaki had seen her the day before in a house where she had gone for a dance. But then he had not believed it, when one of the candidates had pinched him on the back and pointed to a young girl, jumping and swinging her hips from side to side in the midst of a group of dancing women.

“That is Muthoni.”

“Which Muthoni?”

“Joshua's daughter, of course.”

“Joshua's daughter! Joshua's daughter.”

The thing seemed incredible. He had known Muthoni when she was small. He could remember the day he and Kinuthia and Kamau had made Muthoni scream with terror when they had ambushed her at Honia. Waiyaki had felt pleasure which had later turned to shame. It was no bravery frightening away girls, he had thought. Later his mother had beaten him after discovering that he had taken part. Fortunately the matter was hushed up between the women and Chege and Joshua never came to know about it.

And now here she was. Waiyaki had seen Joshua a number of times, both in Makuyu and at Siriana. He had heard of his strictness in matters concerning religion, which meant all matters concerning life. How could she have come here? Perhaps she had run away. Lots of girls had done it. At least that is what he had been told by boys who had come from “the beyond,” where missions had long been established. The same night Waiyaki had sought out Kinuthia. Kinuthia too was a candidate for initiation.

“You surprise me,” Kinuthia had laughed at him. “Haven't you heard that she has run away?”

The idea that she had actually run away, actually rebelled against authority, somehow shocked him. He himself would not have dared to disobey Chege. At least he could not see himself doing so.

So tonight Waiyaki knew that Muthoni had actually run away. Her aunt, living in Kameno, was going to take charge of her. In some villages people could not believe this. They said that Joshua had a hand in it, probably to appease the angry gods of the outraged hills. Was it not known that Joshua took beer secretly? Strangely, nobody had ever seen him drinking. But they said they knew.

The dance was being held at an open-air place in Kameno. Whistles, horns, broken tins and anything else that was handy were taken and beaten to the rhythm of the song and dance. Everybody went into a frenzy of excitement. Old and young, women and children, all were there losing themselves in the magic motion of the dance. Men shrieked and shouted and jumped into the air as they went round in a circle. For them, this was the moment. This was the time. Women, stripped to the waist, with their thin breasts flapping on their chests, went round and round the big fire, swinging their hips and contorting their bodies in all sorts of provocative ways, but always keeping the rhythm.

They were free. Age and youth had become reconciled for this one night. And you could sing about anything and talk of the hidden parts of men and women without feeling that you had violated the otherwise strong social code that governed people's relationships, especially the relationship between young and old, man and woman.

Waiyaki still felt uneasy. Something inside him prevented him from losing himself in this frenzy. Was it because of Muthoni? He wondered what Livingstone would say now if he found him or if he saw the chaos created by locked emotions let loose. And the words spoken! Even Waiyaki was slightly embarrassed by this talk of forbidden things. Perhaps this was so because the mention of forbidden things at any other time was a social taboo. Of course, Waiyaki knew that nothing bad would happen in spite of the talk. It was actually a taboo to go with a woman on such an occasion.

And then Muthoni appeared on the scene. The singing increased in volume and excitement. And she was a wonder. Where had she learned this? Waiyaki wondered as he watched from the side. She danced, sang; describing love; telling of relationships between a woman and a man; scenes and words of loving-making. The missionaries in Siriana would certainly have condemned her to eternal hell. Waiyaki gazed at her. Something slightly stirred in him. In the yellow light she appeared beautiful and happy, a strange kind of elation.

Somebody pulled him into the circle. It was Kinuthia. “Dance!” the girls shouted, pulling him along the circle and repeating some of the hip motions for him. At first that thing inside him kept him aloof, preventing him from fully joining the stream. Although his body moved and his mouth responded to the words, his soul did not fully participate. Then, from a corner, he heard his name. They were singing for him, some praising him and others making jibes at him. The name was taken up by the drummers and the soloists.

The frenzy and shrieks were up again. And suddenly he felt as if a hand soft and strong had held his soul and whipped it off. It was so strange that he felt his emotions and desires temporarily arrested in a single timeless moment; then release. Waiyaki was nothing. He was free. He forgot everything. He wanted only this thing now, this mad intoxication of ecstasy and pleasure. Quick waves of motion flashed through his flesh, through his being.

He was given a horn. He blew it madly. He jumped and swung his hips and did all sorts of marvels with his body. The others tried to follow him. Muthoni's secret was out. You did not have to learn. No. You just gave yourself to the dream in the rhythm. Within a few seconds he found himself face to face with Muthoni. Both had been thrown into the center.

And she seemed to hold him still. Not with hands. Not with anything visible. It was something inside her. What was it? He could not divine what it was. Perhaps her laughter. He thought there was magic in it because it rang into his heart, arousing things he had never felt before. And what was shining in her eyes? Was there a streak of sadness in them? For a time Waiyaki was afraid and looked round. His mother was watching them. He turned to Muthoni. The magic was not there any more; it had gone. In the next moment Waiyaki found himself wandering alone, blindly away from the crowd, wrestling with a hollowness inside his stomach. He felt hurt. He had laid himself naked, exposed himself for all the eyes to see.

He ran into her in the darkened fringe of the trees. She stood there and the only communication between them was quiet breathing, as if each had his own devil to wrestle with.

“You are a rebel,” he said, almost unconsciously.

“Yes—I am,” Muthoni answered defiantly.

“Why did you do it, Muthoni?” he asked with bitterness.

“Do what?”

Waiyaki felt foolish. The words had just formed and he had meant to speak to her gently, coaxing the story out of her. And now he relented. He stammered with confusion.

“I—I mean—eh—eh—running—going away from your father.” She did not answer at once. There was silence between them. They could not see each other in the darkness but they felt each other's presence by their breathing. Then she spoke, in a clear voice but slightly vibrant with sadness.

“No one will understand. I say I am a Christian and my father and mother have followed the new faith. I have not run away from that. But I also want to be initiated into the ways of the tribe. How can I possibly remain as I am now? I knew that my father would not let me and so I came.” Her voice seemed to change. Yet she was speaking in the same tone. Waiyaki, however, felt as if she had forgotten him, as if she was telling her story to the darkness. “I want to be a woman. Father and Mother are circumcised. But why are they stopping me, why do they deny me this? How could I be outside the tribe, when all the girls born with me at the same time have left me?”