Petals of Blood (12 page)

Toward the end of the afternoon she removed the stocktaking sign and put up another one: SHOP NOW OPEN. They sat behind the counter and waited for customers. But nobody came. She was up again. She put up another sign. PERMANENT CLOSING DOWN SALE and on an impulse drew sketches of a shop and people running toward it in a hurry.

A few children came to buy sweets. They laughed and commented on the little sketches of the men. They tried to spell out the words on the notice-board and recognizing the word
close
and
sale
ran to their parents to say that Abdulla’s shop was closing and he was giving away things. Within a few hours the place was full of customers who soon found out the mistake of the children. But they liked the new-look shop and a few remained to gossip and sip beer. Wanja took out chairs for them so they could sit outside on the verandah and while away the time drinking and talking about the harvest.

But even these later went away and Wanja sat patiently behind the counter waiting for a new lot. Her mind started wandering. Tonight the BIG moon would come out: tonight was the day for which she had been waiting since she came to Ilmorog and she hoped that nothing would go wrong. Celebration of Joseph’s impending return to school was only part of her scheme – a coincidence, although it was one with which she was genuinely pleased. Suppose Munira did not come – but he would, he must. She was somehow sure of her
power over men: she knew how they could be very weak before her body. Sometimes she was afraid of this power and she often had wanted to run away from bar kingdoms. But she was not really fit for much else and besides, she thought with a shuddering pain of recognition, she had come to enjoy the elation at seeing a trick – a smile, a certain look, maybe even raising one’s brow, or a gesture like carelessly brushing against a customer – turn a man into a captive and a sighing fool. Still in her sober moments of reflection and self-appraisal, she had longed for peace and harmony within: for those titillating minutes of instant victory and glory often left behind an emptiness, a void, that could only be filled by yet more palliatives of instant conquest. Struggling in the depths of such a void and emptiness, she would then suddenly become aware that in the long run it was men who triumphed and walked over her body, buying insurance against deep involvement with money and guilty smiles or in exaggerated fits of jealousy. She would often seek somebody in whom she could be involved, somebody for whom she could care and be proud to carry his child. For that reason she had somehow avoided direct trading, and that was why she had run away from her cousin who had wanted her straight in the market. No, she preferred friendship, however temporary, she liked and enjoyed the illusion of being wooed and fought over, and being bought a dress or something without her demanding it as a bargain. She liked it best at the counter. There, sitting on a high stool away from the hustle and bustle, she could study people so that soon she became a good judge of men’s faces. She could tell the sympathetic, the sensitive, the rough, the cruel and the intelligent – those whose conversation and words gave her especial pleasure. But she had come to find out that behind most faces was deep loneliness, uncertainty and anxiety and this would often make her sad or want to cry. Otherwise she did not often brood and she enjoyed involvement in her work so that she was much sought by employers. She liked dancing, playing records, memorizing the words of the latest records: on one or two occasions she tried composing but no tune would come. She always wanted to do something, she did not know what it was, but she felt she had the power to do it. When live music was being played – a guitar or a flute – she thought she
could feel this power in her, this power to do – what? She did not know. The music would often take the form of colours – bold colours in motion – and she would mix them up into different patterns with eyes and faces of people – but only as long as the music lasted. She wandered from place to place in search of it or for a man who would show her it. And then she thought she knew. A child. Yes. A child. That is what her body really cried for. She had learnt to take precautions because of her first experience. But now she abandoned all preventives and waited. For a year or so she tried. The more she failed to see a sign the more it became a need, until in the end she could not bear the torture and came to seek advice from her grandmother. Nyakinyua had taken her to Mwathi wa Mugo and it was he who – or rather his voice – who had suggested the night, the new moon. But she did not say anything about her first pregnancy.

No other customers came for the evening. She started to fret. Even Munira had refused to come. Despite his promise. It pained her. Something was wrong with today. Something was wrong. Perhaps even the moon wouldn’t come. Perhaps – and who was Mwathi after all? A voice! Just a voice from behind a wall. What superstition!

‘Abdulla – please – I want to go home,’ she suddenly told Abdulla in the middle of a drink.

‘I don’t know why Munira hasn’t come. Perhaps he was delayed at Ruwa-ini. But it is still early and he may yet come . . .’

‘All the same, I must go,’ she said, and Abdulla was surprised at her many changes of mood. But he was pleased with her work and the look of the shop.

‘I will walk with you part of the way.’

‘All the way,’ she said, suddenly laughing. ‘What a celebration! Joseph didn’t start school today, the harvest of beans was nothing; Munira didn’t come; I haven’t sold much beer.’ She added pensively: ‘Will the moon really show in the sky?’

Karega’s father and his two wives had left Limuru and moved into the Rift Valley in the ’20s. They had lived as squatters on different European farms providing free labour in return for some grazing and cultivation rights on the settlers’ lands. They would be given a piece
of land in the bush: they would clear it and after a year they would be driven off and shown other virgin lands to clear for the European landlord. Thus they had moved from one landlord to the next until they ended in Elburgon. By this time their goats were depleted either through death, or fines, through forced sales ‘to prevent the passing on of tick and other diseases’ and they turned solely to working full-time on settlers’ farms for wages.

It was at Elburgon that his father and mother quarrelled. She complained about her triple duties: to her child Nding’uri; to her husband, and to her European landlord. She was expected to work on the European farms; to work on her own piece of land; and to keep the home in unity, health and peace. At the same time she never saw a cent from her produce. Usually her husband would take it and sell it to the same European farmer, their landlord, who fixed his own buying price; and her husband in turn gave her only enough to buy salt. She rebelled: she would not work on the settlers’ farm for nothing and she demanded a say in the sale of her produce.

He beat her in frustration. She took Nding’uri and ran back to Limuru where she begged for cultivation rights from Munira’s father. At first Brother Ezekiel had refused. But looking at her eyes, he had felt a sudden weakness in the flesh and he had allowed her to build a hut, but he made sure she built where he could visit her without being seen. She had refused him, all the same: and thereafter his weakness and her refusal became a kind of bond between them, a shared secret. He feared that she might expose him to the world.

But she was not interested in exposure. She had her son Nding’uri to look after. He was a tall youth who was splendid in his self-confidence. Nothing could ever perturb him and he, throughout the hardships of the Second World War, and through the famine of cassava, had acted as her main support, often laughing away her anxiety and her fears for him. It was he who in fact had suggested a reconciliation with her husband. She had felt ashamed this coming from a son, and she had briefly returned to her husband in Elburgon who had now added a Nandi bride to his others. The reconciliation was good for only one month and the same pattern of quarrels re-emerged. She ran away again but Karega was the product of that brief reunion.

Munira and Karega walked into the shop almost as soon as Wanja and Abdulla had left. They were both rapt in different thoughts about a past they could not understand. Joseph stood ready.

‘It is all right, Joseph. Just two bottles of Tusker,’ said Munira.

‘I don’t drink,’ Karega said. ‘Let me have Fanta, please.’

‘Do you know what Fanta means? Foolish Africans Never Take Alcohol. You see I am an avid reader of advertisements. Occasionally I even try my mind at a few slogans.’

‘The trouble with slogans or any saying without a real foundation is that it can be used for anything. Phrases like Democracy, the Free World, for instance, are used to mean their opposite. It depends of course on who is saying it where, when and to whom. Take your slogan. It could also mean that Fit Africans Never Take Alcohol. We are both right. But we are both wrong because Fanta is simply an American soft drink sold in Ilmorog.’

Munira laughed and thought: he is too serious and he is already beginning to lecture me, probably from a book!

So he drank alone and retreated into his own private thoughts. He had caught up with Karega and he had managed to persuade him to stay for the night. But he did not know how to introduce the subject of their earlier conversation. It was obvious that Karega avoided any reference to it. Munira formed mental pictures of Siriana, the Ironmongers, Fraudsham, Chui, Nding’uri, Mukami: Aah, Mukami – her image was the most alive in his mind: she had been serenely beautiful but with impish eyes, especially when she laughed. She had loved practical jokes. She once placed a drawing-pin on a chair – he had sat on it and jumped up to everybody’s laughter, and he had been very angry. Later she told him that it was meant for her father – she had wanted to see how he would react with his holy-looking face. Munira had laughed. How and where did Karega fit into the picture? This was a case of history repeating itself, and indeed for him at that moment the cliché seemed to acquire new significance. Yet did anything ever repeat itself? He opened the next bottle of Tusker and poured beer into the glass. He watched the foam clear into a thin white bubbly ring at the top. He watched the air-bubbles race up to the top. Before 1952 Africans were not allowed this kind of drink and
Munira, as a boy, used to think of those bubbles as sugary sweetness. He could not finish the second bottle. There is a depression, an acid drop in the pit of one’s stomach that no amount of beer can wash away. His evening with Wanja was ruined. He would not be able to walk her home because she was already there. But he still needed a human voice to remove that feeling inside. He bought six bottles of Tusker.

‘Let’s go to Wanja’s place,’ he told Karega.

Again they hardly exchanged more than two words all the way to Wanja’s hut. He knocked at the door and he was grateful when he heard the hinges creak because now there would be more company to absorb Karega’s resentful silence.

‘Karibu, Mwalimu, karibu,’ Wanja called. ‘Oh, you brought another guest. You really know how to bring warmth to my hut.’

‘His name is Karega: I found him waiting for me at the house and we had a little talk.’

‘But don’t talk standing. Sit.’

‘Karibu, Mwalimu,’ said Abdulla. ‘You could have brought Karega to the shop to celebrate. It was your turn to walk Wanja home today.’

‘Abdulla, you surprise me. You mean you were not glad to walk a girl home?’ said Wanja in pretended anger.

‘It is only to make sure that my turn tomorrow is still there,’ Abdulla said, and he laughed.

The hut was well lit by the pressure-lamp placed on a small table near the head-end of the bed. Abdulla was slightly hidden by a shadow from the folded curtain which Wanja normally used to shield the bed from the sitting place. But his face was aglow, his eyes intensely bright. Munira handed Wanja the six Tuskers he had brought and sat on a cushioned armchair near the small table. Karega sat next to Munira, his shadow falling on Munira’s face. Wanja started looking for an opener in a small cupboard by the wall.

‘Forget it,’ said Abdulla.

‘You’ll open them with your teeth?’ she asked.

‘Just bring the beer here.’

He held one bottle firmly on his knee with his left hand: then, holding another in his right hand, he placed the grooves of the tops
against one another and opened the first with an explosive plop. He twice repeated the performance with the insouciance of an actor before a captive audience.

‘How do you do that?’ asked Wanja. ‘I have seen it done in bars but I’ve never found out how.’ She filled their glasses while Abdulla tried to demonstrate the act.

‘I do not touch drinks.’

‘Would you like a glass of milk?’

‘It is strange to see a young man who does not drink these days,’ commented Abdulla. ‘You should keep it up. But I fear that in a few weeks I shall find you completely drowned in wine . . . and women.’

‘I hope not to give in.’

‘To what? Women or wine?’ pursued Abdulla.

‘Abdulla, how can you put women and wine together? He’ll choose women and leave wine to you two. Milk?’

‘No. Let me have some water. A glass of water.’

She fetched him water and sat on the bed between Munira and Abdulla.

‘You ought to get a job as a bottle-opener,’ she told Abdulla.

‘Put an advertisement,’ butted in Munira. ‘Experienced bottle-opener seeking a highly paid job.’

‘Munira, did you tell Karega that we are celebrating an addition to your school?’

‘No. But he has just met Joseph. Joseph, who is Abdulla’s younger brother, is starting school on Monday.’

Karega looked puzzled.

‘There is nothing to celebrate,’ Abdulla explained. ‘It is true that he is returning to school. But that is as it should be. We are celebrating new life in Ilmorog, and the beginning of the long-awaited harvest.’

‘How was the harvest? Did it yield much?’ Munira asked.

‘Not much,’ Wanja said. ‘It’ll be a lucky farmer who’ll fill two gunias of beans.’

‘Maybe the maize . . .’ Munira said.

‘That . . . it does not look as if it will be much, though my donkey will be grateful for the dry stalks of maize,’ Abdulla answered. ‘Or what do you think Wanja? You are a barmaid farmer.’