Petals of Blood (18 page)

Wash me, Redeemer, and I shall be whiter than snow: so they sang then, as Munira was later to sing in Siriana.

Rewards there were: a proof of God’s nodding response. With a mixture of tinkling coins and trickery of the pen and the law he was able to buy whole lands from some of the declining mbari lords and clans and also from individuals who needed money to pay their expected dues to the new Caesar. Such were those who did not want to turn into workers on European settlers’ lands, then the only means of securing the coins needed by Caesar. They sold their lands bit by bit to those like Waweru who could get the coins through bringing more souls to Christ. In the end they joined the very labouring clan they were trying to avoid by the sale of their land and property. For the Caesar kept on making more and more demands. There were other mbaris too, like that of Kagunda whose sons wanted only to drink and not look after their inherited wealth. So Kanjohi, elder son of Kagunda, sold all his family lands to Waweru and himself went to the Rift Valley. This and more: Waweru seized all the openings so that under the old colonial regime, he was a very powerful landowner and churchman. Waweru was amongst the first Africans allowed to grow pyrethrum as a cash crop and to sell it to the white growers. This gave him a head-start over his more pagan neighbours, some of whom had been pacified to eternal sleep or to slave-labour camps in towns or farms by Frederick Lugard, Meinertzhagen, Grogan, Francis Hall and other hirelings of Her Imperial Majesty, Defender of the Faith, Elect of God. God save the Queen, they sang after every massacre and then went to church for blessings and cleansing: it had always fallen to the priest to ordain human sacrifice to appease every dominant God in history.

There was a photograph of his father taken between the wars which had always impressed Munira.

Waweru is standing by a gramophone on which is drawn a picture of a dog sitting on its hind legs barking out:
HIS MASTER’S VOICE
. He is dressed in a jacket and riding breeches and boots and a chain passes over the front of the waistcoat. He is wearing a sun-helmet and in his hands he is holding the Bible.

Munira had always felt a slight discomfort with this picture, but he could never tell what it was to which he was really objecting. In the same way he had married a girl from a pagan home, maybe as a prompting from the heart against what his father stood for. But the girl turned out a replica of his more obedient sisters. She could never get it out of her mind that she had married into a renowned Christian house, and she tried to be the ideal daughter-in-law. She broke his parents’ initial resistance by her readiness to be moulded anew. Julia soon became his mother’s special creation and as such his mother adored her. Munira could have forgiven her everything but those silent prayers before and after making love. But he had never lifted a finger to fight against the process.

Life for him had always been a strain. His father thought him a loss. And he, Munira, always felt a need to break loose. But he always hesitated. It was as if he would not have known what he was running away from and what he was running toward.

But now as Munira approached his home, a headmastership and an Invitation to Tea all in one pocket, he felt happy. His first big initiative, occasioned by the general idealism that had gripped the country just before and for a little while after independence, had produced a fruit however small. Invitation and a promotion. He could now even stand up to the profile of his father looming large in Munira’s imagination as he rode through the brisk air toward his home.

It turned out that most teachers and their wives had been invited to tea at Gatundu. They had also been asked to take twelve shillings and fifty cents for a self-help project. Munira’s wife, despite attempts to cover it with a Christian grace, was also excited. For Munira the Saturday would remain tattooed in his mind so that he would pass it
alive to his children: he, Munira, was going to tea with a living legend which had dominated the consciousness of a country for almost a century. What wouldn’t one give for the honour! Once again Munira felt a little bit above the average.

The bus that took them came around six to the Ruwa-ini post office, and everybody was worried: someone even suggested that they should cancel the trip, but he was hushed by the others. It was better late than never: tea in such a place would mean a night’s feast. The solemn-looking government official assured them that all was well.

The sudden reversal of fortune was the most painful Munira had experienced since the Siriana incident. They were taken past Gatundu, through some banana plantations where they found yet another crowd of people solemnly waiting for something. A funeral tea? Munira wondered, numbed to silence by the eerie sombreness of everything. He looked around: the government official had vanished. They were now ordered into lines – one for men, the other for women. A teacher asked loudly: is this the tea we came to have? He was hit with the flat of a panga by a man who emerged from nowhere and as suddenly disappeared into nowhere. How did Mzigo and the government official come into all this? It was dark: a small light came from a hut into which people disappeared in groups of ten or so. What is it all about? thudded Munira’s heart. And then it was his turn!

On the way back, around midnight, Munira knew that Julia was silently weeping. He felt her withdrawal, the accusation of betrayal: but how could he answer her now, how could he tell her that he truly did not know? He was hungry and thirsty and all throughout the bus was this hush of a people conscious of having been taken in: of having participated in a rite that jarred with time and place and persons and people’s post-Uhuru expectations! How could they as teachers face their children and tell them that Kenya was one?

Later Munira was to learn that a very important person in authority, with the tacit understanding and approval from other very important persons in authority like Nderi, some even from other national communities, was the brain behind this business. But the knowledge did not reconcile him to the act.

At home Julia looked at him and said: ‘So you could not be man enough to tell your wife!’

For the first time in his life Munira felt that he must have a man-to-man talk with his father. He now saw his father in a new and more positive light. In the 1890s he had stood up to his grandfather and joined the mission. In 1952 he had defied the movement and stuck to the Church. He had even dared preach against the movement. For these efforts he had had his cattle boma broken into and his cows taken away. His left ear was cut off as a warning. It is true that he had ceased preaching against it, but at least he had not abandoned the faith and the side that he had chosen. Yes. He would talk to him man to man, face to face, and learn the true secret of his father’s success.

He went to his parents’ house early the following day. He found his father in prayer. Munira felt weak at the knees. He knelt on the floor, genuinely trembling before the Lord. If being saved would help him, he would be saved. If beating and tearing and baring his chest before the Lord would really help him to choose the right path once and for all, he would surely do that so as to be cleansed of terror and doubt and indecision for ever. How proud he now was of a father so serene, so sure and secure in both wealth and faith!

Ezekiel Waweru was still one of the most powerful landlords in the area, adding to his pyrethrum estates new tea estates he bought from the departing colonials. It was an irony of history, or, for him, a manifestation of the mysterious ways of the Lord, that the new tea estate was in Tigoni, the very area Waweru’s father had cited as the one act of colonial theft which caused big and small houses of the period to join the people in armed resistance. His children except Mukami and Munira had done well.

If he was surprised to see Munira call on him so early on a Sunday, or puzzled by the man’s contrite face and sudden involvement in prayer, he did not show it on the face. Maybe God had finally brought him home, he reasoned, suppressing the contempt he felt toward Munira.

Munira’s fear and puzzled anger at yesterday’s experience seemed to grow and increase with reflection and distance in time. But not wanting to shock his father – and now, Munira thought, he would
descend to the lowest depths in his father’s estimation of him – he trod gingerly, softly, though his bitterness at being tricked, he, of all people, a teacher, urged him to spill everything. His father listened rapt in thought and this encouraged Munira.

‘What I could not understand . . . what I shall never forget was this man . . . he was so poorly dressed . . . rags . . . no shoes even . . . and he stood there, when all of us were trembling, and he said: “I am a squatter – a working-man in a tea plantation owned by Milk Stream Tea Estates. I used to work there before 1952. During the movement I was in charge of spying and receiving guns and taking them to our fighters. I was later detained. Now I am working on the same estate owned by the same company. Only now some of our people have joined them. It is good that some of our people are eating. But I will not take another oath until the promises of the first one have been fulfilled.” They beat him in front of us. They stepped on his neck and pressed it with their boots against the floor, and only when he made animal noises did they stop. He took the oath all right. But not with his heart. I shall never forget his screaming.’

Munira had never felt so close to his father. Even when Waweru started lecturing him about his failures, he took it as justified chastisement: and who was he to contradict a father who at least had stood by some principles?

‘I don’t need to tell you that you have been a disappointment to me. You are my eldest son and you know what that means. I sent you to Siriana: you got into bad company and you were sent home. If you look at some of the people you were in school with you can see where they are: you go to any ministry, go to any big company, they are there. Your first act of manhood was to impregnate a woman. We thank the Lord that Julia turned out to be a good woman. But instead of staying together with her, you ran away to a place whose name I can’t even mouth. You have always run from opportunities. You have always run away from every chance to make yourself a man. I have all this property. I am ageing. You could at least look after it. Look at your brothers . . . only the other day little children. Take a lesson from them. The banker one has bought houses all over Nairobi. He has a number of trading premises in Nairobi. He could set you up in one.
He could get you a loan. And your brother in the oil company. Go to any petrol station between here and everywhere. He has some small thing there. Your sisters too . . . Now it has been reported to me that you even drink. You will come to a bad end: just like your sister . . .’

‘Mukami?’ Munira asked automatically. He deserved all this and more, and after today he would reform his ways. ‘Tell me, father . . . what really happened to Mukami? What drove Mukami to it?’

‘Bad company . . . bad company . . . Mariamu . . . bad woman . . . Her sons have been my ruin.’

His father’s voice broke at the memory. There was a minute of silence as he tried to regain his balance. Munira was sorry that he had raised the question and stirred painful memories. His father suddenly stood up, took his coat and beckoned Munira to follow him.

They walked to the top of the ridge looking down upon the vast estate. Waweru was always proud of this estate because it was the one he had acquired when he was beginning to accumulate, before the Second World War.

‘Do you see all this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Flowers. Fruit trees. Tea . . . cows . . . everything.’

‘Yes.’

‘It has not come into being just because of the strength of my limbs alone. It is the Lord’s doing. It is true that this land of the Agikuyu is blessed by the Lord. The prosperity has multiplied several times since independence. My son, trust in God and you’ll never put your foot wrong. God chooses the time of planting and of harvesting. He chooses His vessel for His vast design. Now listen my son. The old man is truly God’s vessel. He suffered. But when he came out, did he take a stick and beat his enemies? No! He only said: “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Now all that prosperity, all that hard-won freedom is threatened by Satan working through other tribes, arousing their envy and jealousy. That is why this oath is necessary. It is for peace and unity and it is in harmony with God’s eternal design. Now you listen to me. I have been there. I used the Bible. I want your mother to go. She is refusing. But Christ will soon show her the light. Even highly educated people are going there, of
their own accord. My son, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This KCO is not a bad thing . . . We shall even have a Church Branch. It’s a cultural organization to bring unity and harmony between all of us, the rich and the poor, and to end envy and greed. God helps those who help themselves. And He said that never again would He give free manna from heaven . . .’

Munira was not sure if he had heard his father correctly. He looked at his father, at his missing ear: he remembered his father’s denunciation of the oath in earlier times: whence this change to the same thing? Was it the same thing? He was again confused:

‘You mean that you . . .’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said quickly, almost impatiently. Munira for the first time tried to argue back with his father.

‘But before God there are no tribes. We are all equal before the Lord.’

‘My son,’ he said, after considering his words for a few minutes. ‘Go back and teach. And stop drinking. If you are tired of teaching, come back here. I have work for you. My estates are many. And I am ageing. Or join KCO. Get a bank loan. Start business.’

‘Here on our farm, since I was a child, I’ve seen so many workers: Luo, Gusii, Embu, Kamba, Somali, Luhya, Kikuyu – and they have all worked together. I have seen them praise the Lord without any ill-feeling between them.’

‘I don’t know why you came. I did not know that you had come to preach to your father. But I will repeat this. Go back and teach. These things are deeper than you think.’