Petals of Blood (29 page)

He rang a bell and she was taken back to the others. She went to a corner and just sat facing the wall, unable to talk or even cry. Karega and Njuguna asked her what the man had wanted. She simply shrugged her shoulders.

The door opened and Njuguna was called outside by one of the many hands about the house. Outside Njuguna listened to the message from the chief: Wanja was a former wife of the gentleman. She had run away to Ilmorog and now she was refusing the man’s bed. Njuguna came back looking reproachfully at Wanja.

Njuguna explained the situation as tactfully as he could, presenting them with the harsh prospects before them.

‘No!’ Karega shouted as soon as he got the gist of the man’s demands.

‘Will a child die . . . will Joseph die just because . . . because . . . Besides she is . . . in a way the man’s wife,’ insisted Njuguna.

‘But she does not know the man! She has, we all have, met him tonight for the first time!’ Karega protested incredulously.

‘Let her deny it,’ said Njuguna with a tone of triumphant finality.

‘Is it true? Wanja, is it true?’ Karega asked, and waited for her to answer.

But she sat in the same position as if she had not heard his question. What pained her was not so much the man’s lies, not so much Njuguna’s attitude, not even Karega’s question, but what Njuguna had said about Joseph dying. She would be responsible for a death of another who did not even belong to her. She looked back to the origin of the journey. Maybe she was to blame. If she had not suggested, indeed insisted on their coming into this place when others had opted for a continuation of the journey . . . if she had not slipped in her youth . . . If . . . if . . . so many ifs and they all weighed heavily on her. What was she to do? Give in to a man she hated, and hardly six months since she had vowed to herself? If she didn’t . . . and Joseph died . . . and Nyakinyua and the others . . . in the cold . . . hungry . . . thirsty . . . the drought in Ilmorog . . . failed mission . . . no rescue . . . more deaths . . . what shall I do? What shall I do? Face another humiliation? She wished she had told Karega the whole truth about her past . . . then he might have helped her solve her dilemma . . . she raised her head and looked Karega full in the eyes.

‘Yes! yes!’ she whispered and stood up, reaching for the door.

For a second, Karega sat completely still, immobile, and gazed at the same spot: what did one believe? What really could one believe now? He stirred himself. He stood up and saw himself walk toward her and hold her by the hand just as she was about to open the door. She felt one thrilling shivering in the flesh, and raised her eyes to him in weakness and appeal, and then turned her eyes away, aside, waiting for judgment from him. Anything, anything but this dilemma which was also her shame.

‘I do not know anything,’ he said, a little put out by the pregnant
silence in the room, ‘but . . . but . . . must you go?’ he ended rather pathetically.

She looked at him again, briefly, saw the dancing intensity in his eyes, and almost hated him for his youth and his innocence. She was in that second conscious of the moral gulf of knowledge and experience between them and she steeled herself against crying. A bit impatiently, irritably in fact, she disengaged her hand, opened the door and walked out, banging the door so hard behind her that it left a tremor in the room and inside her. He must die, a voice thudded within, he must die. It was simple. It was bitterly sweet. It restored her calm and peace.

Behind, in the room, Karega, who suddenly diminished further into his corner, groaned once. He should die, he said as if answering a question somebody had asked. If I had a light I would burn up the whole place, he said. Njuguna, startled by the unexpected groan and more by the utterance, looked at him, saw him huddled together in a statuesque position, and then looked at the wall. Youth, youth, Njuguna muttered to himself. Now eerie silence and ill-foreboding gloom surrounded them both.

4 ~ Finally on Monday morning the delegation reached the city. They joked and laughed at their new anxieties and constant amazement at everything: the streets, the buildings so tall, the heavy traffic and even the various dresses worn by men and women in the city. Crossing the streets was their most major undertaking. Once or twice, as they ran full speed across the streets, two or three cars screeched to a sudden stop with the drivers swearing: who are these Masai? These Dorobo and their donkey-carts should be banned from the city! But they were glad that after so much hardship they had arrived in the famous city. There is no night so long that it will not give way to the light of day.

The offices of the Hon. Nderi wa Riera, MP for Ilmorog and Southern Ruwa-ini, were situated in the second floor of Iqbal Iqlood Buildings in the then Market Street within a walking distance of Camay Restaurant and Jeevanjee Gardens. The main delegation waited in the gardens while Karega and Munira went to the offices to see if their honourable member would receive the delegation.

The secretary, a heavily lipsticked and wigged lady, whom they
found manicuring her nails, looked the two men up and down, and then froze their expectant hearts: the MP was not in, he had gone to Mombasa and was expected back any day. She saw the sudden drop of their faces and the dullness in their eyes and for some reason she felt pity: would they try the afternoon of the following day? With despondent faces and hearts, Karega and Munira went back to the others: where would they sleep tonight? Why, oh why had they not thought of such a possibility? But what would they have done even if they had known it?

Karega and Munira found the others in another crisis: Abdulla’s donkey and cart had been detained by the police, for holding up the traffic and shitting in one of the streets and in Jeevanjee Gardens. But Abdulla explained the circumstances of their journey. The police said they would hold the donkey until the group was ready to leave.

Karega was not particularly religious: but even he felt a devil had been trailing them and their mission. They had endured lashes of hunger and thirst and the cruelty of their fellow men. Now fortune had decided to strike at the already fallen. People looked up at him, the author of the journey, expecting him to solve the riddle. But what can I do, he asked himself bitterly, unable to tell them the most obvious truth: that they would have to stay and spend the night in Jeevanjee Gardens.

It was Wanja who again rescued them.

Sitting alone, as if set apart from the others, she nevertheless saw the agony on Karega’s face and a thought, not unconnected with the soul-searching turbulence and turmoil in her heart, came to her.

‘Listen, Karega. I told you about a man, a lawyer, in this city. He is . . . he is . . . somewhat different from most people.’

Karega gratefully clutched at the straw without any questions.

The two went across the Gardens to an Indian restaurant near Khoja Mosque. At any other time Karega would have liked to look at the building and try to imagine at which corner Ole Masai had once so dramatically held up the two colonial policemen. But now the same question was in their minds: suppose the lawyer too was not in? Wanja dialled the number: his voice was to her like yet another hand reaching out to her after a night of terror and now she felt she would cry. She
tried to explain her problem but he cut her short: why didn’t she go to his office instead? He gave her the directions and told her the bus she should take.

Karega had never been to a lawyer’s place, and as the bus took them along Mboya Street, Ngala Street, River Road, Kariokor, and then Pumwani, he kept on picturing awe-inspiring corridors of gruff power and privilege. But they ended by going into a rundown part of the city with endless lines of cardboard and tin roofs. A long queue of clients waited outside the tiny room of an office. He received them cordially and did not show any surprise at seeing Wanja again.

‘Aah, the young lady,’ was all he said, and told them to sit on the bench. Karega expected to see an old man with heavy-rimmed glasses or something and grey hairs with striped trousers, a waistcoat, a hat, and an umbrella by his side. But he saw a man, maybe in his forties, but with a white short-sleeved shirt and a simple tie, looking too young to be a lawyer and to have that crowd waiting to see him. On a closer look, Karega noticed that his face had a touch of weariness, and his eyes were restless as if troubled by an inner light, an inner consciousness, weighed down, it seemed, by a burden of abundant knowledge.

‘You did not go home,’ he said, but there was no blame in the tone of his voice, there was no accusation, it was as if he genuinely wanted to know.

‘No . . . I could not,’ she answered in a whisper.

‘And how can I help you?’ he asked, including Karega in the conversation with a glance. Again he had a way of seeming interested, receptive, and he made it easy for someone to talk, as if what he said could never be used against him in censure, blame or ridicule, or in any adverse judgment. So Karega told him about the drought in Ilmorog, the decision to send a delegation to the city, and the journey, up to their present predicament. He omitted a description of the actual hardships. All they now wanted was a place in which they could stay for the night while they waited for an audience with their Member of Parliament. The lawyer’s face clouded a little: he tapped the table twice with his fingers and said:

‘As you can see, I have these people waiting outside. Most of them
come from the villages: they need advice on everything, from their lands threatened by banks to how they can acquire this or that kiosk . . . or about money taken from them by a big fellow after promising to buy them a farm in the Highlands . . . all that! Can you remember my place?’

‘Yes . . . if you tell me the bus to take or the road to follow.’

‘You take them there. There’s a garden at the back of the house. In any case there is no other house behind mine. I will see you later.’

Karega felt tremendous relief. He would not now have to sit out a night of reproachful eyes. But what a strange man . . . so there are such people left in this country, he thought, feeling grateful to Wanja.

In the bus he tried to say this to Wanja, then he changed his mind and simply looked out at the slums, the naked children playing in the narrow streets, and he wondered: who was better off, the peasant in a forgotten village or the city dweller thrown onto these rubbish heaps they called locations?

Wanja noticed his hesitation and it pained her, it touched her barely healed wounds, but she tried to understand. He would always judge her in the light of the ordeal at the house. How could she have known that fate would bring her face to face with a past from which she was running? Suddenly she felt hatred well up inside her: she hated his innocence: she hated the moral weight he made her carry even in his very silence. So what if she had given in, she hissed inside to prevent tears, so what? Had she not suffered enough for them? She had not even wanted to come on this journey!

The lawyer’s place in Nairobi West was one of those areas formerly and exclusively reserved for Indians. The house had a wide cobble-stoned front yard enclosed by stone walls and a small garden, again enclosed by stone walls, at the back. Some sat in the front yard, others in the garden. It was good that Abdulla’s roots and eucalyptus leaves had worked: the roots and the leaves had been boiled and Joseph had been covered with a blanket until he had sweated out the illness. Now he was playing with the other boys. They were happy to be in Nairobi. Wanja had mixed feelings and attitudes to this place: a reminder of salvation and shame. Then she remembered her latest moment of shame and humiliation only two nights back when after ten minutes
or so she had joined Karega and Njuguna. Karega, Njuguna and Wanja had walked to the gate in silence and to their dismay found that the others had gone. But a man suddenly emerged from the darkness and told them to follow him. It was then that the mystery was solved:

It was true that the owner of the house had sent the two men to the gate to check on Wanja and Karega’s story. The two, after listening to the people’s wretched story, had put their heads together. They knew how cruel their boss, whom they only knew as Mr Hawkins, could be: he had once locked up a man who had called to simply ask directions for a whole week with only water for food. They decided not to disclose these people’s presence. One had led them to the workers’ quarters: the other had returned to tell a lie. And that was where they had all spent the Sunday and the Sunday night to resume their journey that morning. And throughout the Sunday and the night Karega and Wanja had somehow avoided each other. Even Njuguna was withdrawn and sad.

Karega too was thinking about the experience of the two nights before and the mystery of Wanja’s past. What was the true connection between her and that Mr Hawkins? He dismissed the thought. Everybody had his own secret past. He looked at Abdulla who sat and leaned against the wall. He had withdrawn into a shell, into a seemingly impenetrable world of gloom and silence. To Karega it was painful: the change from the godlike hunter in the plains, the master of guns and knives and herbs and elements of the weather, so confident in his knowledge of and intimacy with a heroic past, to this old man shrinking into himself. Then Karega remembered that the donkey was under police care and he understood. He saw Wanja slip out of the house and he followed her into the street. He alone understood how much they owed to her. He caught up with her. They walked together in silence along a narrow tarmac road at the back of the house.

‘Go away, go away from me,’ she suddenly said, almost savagely. But he did not. They walked on, along Muhoho Road, through Gadhi Avenue, to Langata Road, toward Langata Barracks. She stopped by a fence and looked to the plains of Nairobi Park. He also stood beside her and looked at the Ngong Hills in the distance silhouetted against
a misty sky. Then they saw a small aeroplane fly low, low . . . ‘It’s going to fall, it’s going to fall,’ Wanja said. They saw another and yet another and Karega remembered that they were near Wilson Airport. It was the place where tourists came to hire private planes for a quick venture into the interior to see the wild game parks and return to the city before dark.