Petals of Blood (42 page)

‘Don’t you know me?’ Karega asks, anxiously.

‘I do . . . why else am I here?’

‘That is strange. Did you know that we were coming? Did you really know of our journey?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is even more strange.’

‘Why?’

‘Imagine. I would never have thought—’

‘Thought what?’

‘That you would know me. I mean I was so small . . . I must have been . . . I may not even have been born!’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Seedlings from the same womb. Kinsmen. Mumbi’s children. Nyumba ya Mumbi. It does matter, or is it not so?’

‘Why are you adrift on a raft?’

‘I wanted to find you . . . to show you that I have grown big . . . And . . . and . . . that I know your secret . . . I know Abdulla.’

‘But who are you?’

‘I thought you said you knew me and of our journey.’

‘Yes. I know of your journey. I know the journey of search and exploration undertaken by all my brothers and sisters. For have we not travelled this road together? Tell me one black man who is not adrift even in the land of his birth. But you? For a second I thought I knew you. Listen, my brothers, the true house of Mumbi, Mumbi the mother creator, is all the black toiling masses carrying a jembe in one hand and three bullets in the other, struggling against centuries of drifting, sole witnesses of their own homecoming. That is why in 1952 we took the oath.’

‘Why did you?’

‘Our land . . . our sweat . . . our bodies . . . our minds . . . our black souls,’ he says, and carries on following the other soldier-toilers of the continent.

Karega shouts behind him: ‘I want to follow you! Do you hear me? Let us journey together.’

Nding’uri stops and he is now both weary and angry.

‘What kind of teacher are you? Leave your children adrift? The struggle, brother, starts where you are.’

He dissolves into the mist of time. And Karega feels the full impact of that last rebuke. How foolish of me . . . how foolish . . . Foolish Africans Never Take Alcohol . . . FANTA . . . Teachers’ Union Says Karega Evades Responsibility . . . TUSKER . . . what foolish answers. He sees that more children have raised their hands to ask questions.

‘Yes, Joseph.’

‘You have told us about black history. You have been telling us about our heroes and our glorious victories. But most seem to end in defeat. Now I want to ask my question . . . If what you say is true, why then was it possible for a handful of Europeans to conquer a continent and to lord it over us for four hundred years? How was it possible, unless it is because they have bigger brains, and that we are the children of Ham, as they say in the Christian Bible?’

He suddenly starts fuming with anger. He knows that a teacher should not erupt into anger but he feels his defeat in that question. Maybe the journey has been long and they have wandered over too many continents and over too large a canvas of time.

‘Look, Joseph. You have been reading eeh, American children’s encyclopedia and the Bible. They used the Bible to steal the souls and minds of ever-grinning Africans, caps folded at the back, saying prayers of gratitude for small crumbs labelled aid, loans, famine relief while big companies are busy collecting gold and silver and diamonds, and while we fight among ourselves saying I am a Kuke, I am a Luo, I am a Luhyia, I am a Somali . . . and . . . and . . . There are times, Joseph, when victory is defeat and defeat is victory.’

He is trembling with anger with his inability to reach them and he shouts a few obscenities at Nderi and all the followers, all the gunbearers, of Goode and Livingstone and Rhodes and Gordon and Meinertzhagen and Henderson and Johnson and Nixon. If he could get at them, he shouts and suddenly wakes up, sweating.

He sat up and looked about him and was relieved to find that it was only Munira standing beside him.

‘I did not mean to wake you . . . but you have slept a whole day yesterday and a whole night. And now it’s about ten o’clock.’

‘Have I? Is it so?’ he asked, yawning.

‘Yes. You did not even bolt your door.’

‘There are no thieves yet, else the policemen and the churchmen would already have occupied the buildings they have just completed.’

Munira paced about the room and then stopped. He tried to say something and then seemed to hold back the words.

Karega was puzzled by Munira’s behaviour. He looked at him more closely. Munira had resumed his pacing about the room, hands folded at the back, clenching and unclenching his fingers. Even through the fatigue that comes from oversleeping, Karega could sense that Munira was troubled by something and he felt concerned.

‘What is it, Mwalimu?’ He yawned again. ‘Aah, my sleep. Do excuse me my yawning. It is an aftermath of that illusion-inducing Theng’eta stuff. You don’t think it is dangerous? I feel fine and clear in the head, clear in the body. But I had such a terrible nightmare.’

‘It is nothing. Nothing. I also feel fine. Strong, clear. No hangover even. Oh, no, I don’t think it is dangerous. It is only that in your what you call nightmare, you kept on shouting names. Some were rather incomprehensible. But some were clear.’

‘I hope I did not give away any secrets.’

‘No, no, no secrets. You whispered Mukami and Wanja . . . that kind of thing . . .’

Munira suddenly halted his nervous walkabout. He leaned against the wall. Then he went to the bookshelf, picked out a book,
Facing Mount Kenya
, opened a few pages and put it back. He picked out,
Not Yet Uhuru
, again opened a few more pages and returned it to the shelf without reading it. Composed, he turned to Karega and cleared his throat.

‘Mr Karega!’ he said, rather abruptly. The tone made Karega look up, rather sharply. Munira seemed to be summoning enough courage to proceed. ‘Mr Karega, I don’t know how to put this, but – eh – you have now been here for about two years. But we could say that you
came as a refugee and I did my best to welcome you. We have lived in the same compound and a few things, some pleasant, others not so pleasant, have happened to us. But after what has happened . . . I mean . . . after your own confessions about my sister, my family and all that, don’t you think it is time, eh, don’t you think it will be a little difficult our staying in the same place?’

‘Are you, Mr Munira, suggesting that . . . but I can’t understand what has brought this into your head . . . are you suggesting that I leave my job?’

‘You are putting it rather strongly. But you will agree that your confession has made things rather awkward. We cannot after all escape from our separate though linked pasts. I mean one has memories . . . responsibilities even though only to one’s own self-respect. Now, in a manner of speaking, it could be said, couldn’t it, that you drove Mukami to her suicide.’

‘Munira!’

‘Alas, it is you who after all had eaten more salt than she had. And one thing more, Mr Karega. It is not very flattering to me, even though it may only be in a nightmare, to have my own dear sister compared to . . . well . . . mentioned in the same breath with a prostitute, even though a Very Important Prostitute!’

Karega sprang out of the bed and rushed at Munira. Munira moved a step to the side, and Karega almost hit into the wall. As suddenly, Karega’s hands became limp in the air, and then he let them fall by his side. But his eyes were still red with intense anger and loathing. He weakened with pain, with his own impotence for instant vengeance: this man had been his teacher, he was certainly older than he was, and even for that alone he deserved his respect. But he had welcomed him here, had even found him a job, and besides, did he but know, had touched a sensitive guilty core at the heart of Karega’s being. So he only stood and fought to hold back hot tears threatening at the edges.

‘If you had not once been . . . if you had not been, if you . . .’

He could not finish the sentence. He sat back on the bed for a time choked into silence by a mixture of guilt, bitterness, inward rage and incomprehension. He just stared past Munira, through the door, to
the schoolyard and beyond, as if he would seek an answer out there where life, real life, was being played out, and not in this wretched corner of idleness and dreams and memories. He now spoke as if to a world outside Ilmorog.

‘Only two nights ago we all drank Theng’eta together to celebrate a harvest and the successful ending of what was certainly a difficult year in Ilmorog. It was a good harvest and you’ll agree with me that such sense of a common destiny, a collective spirit, is rare. That is why the old woman rightly called it a drink of peace. Now it has turned out to be a drink of strife. I suppose this had to be, though I still don’t understand it. You had your reasons for coming here, I had mine. You say that we cannot after all escape from our pasts and with that I agree. But we do not have to heap insults on others. We are all prostitutes, for in a world of grab and take, in a world built on a structure of inequality and injustice, in a world where some can eat while others can only toil, some can send their children to schools and others cannot, in a world where a prince, a monarch, a businessman can sit on billions while people starve or hit their heads against church walls for divine deliverance from hunger, yes, in a world where a man who has never set foot on this land can sit in a New York or London office and determine what I shall eat, read, think, do, only because he sits on a heap of billions taken from the world’s poor, in such a world, we are all prostituted. For as long as there’s a man in prison, I am also in prison: for as long as there is a man who goes hungry and without clothes, I am also hungry and without clothes. Why then need a victim hurl insults at another victim? Least of all need we pour vileness and meanness on the memory of those who were once dear to us, those rare few who rejected the class snobbery of their group, those who had faith and love and truth and beauty and only wanted free unfettered human contact and growth.’

There followed another moment of silence embarrassing to Munira because once again he felt on trial, that he had been placed on a moral balance and had been found wanting.

‘My father is a church elder and so you can imagine that one can grow a little tired of sermons and moral platitudes,’ Munira said, and felt slightly pleased with that rejoinder.

‘I know he is – and more—’ Karega said, and now he sharply looked at Munira, who winced a little at the piercing eyes. ‘But I was not trying to preach. I was only thinking of those who chose and preferred to die for their chosen cause. But I shall not resign from this school. It will be hard, our working together, but I don’t intend to go away.’

‘We shall see, we shall see,’ Munira said, ominously.

‘About one thing, you are right, though,’ Karega continued. ‘I feel like I have been hiding from something. Do you know why I first came to look for you? You were her brother. You taught her. You taught me. And quite apart from needing help, I honestly thought you could unravel the Siriana mystery and make me understand the root cause of Chui’s behaviour and actions. But during the journey, I saw many more Chuis and I am not sure if I want to understand it any more. One must grow. History after all is not a gallery of dashing heroes. But I intend to stay here and look about me. I want to choose my side in the struggle to come,’ he added, remembering the lawyer’s letter.

‘We shall see,’ Munira added with greater menace, ‘but if I were you I would start thinking of employment elsewhere! or better still how to get a place at a Teacher Training College.’

1 ~ Happy New Year. Grass was full. The wandering herdsmen had once again come back to the plains. Rain will rain. More grass will grow. More crops will grow. We shall eat our fill and forget the drought of the year before. But we shall not forget Munira and Karega and Abdulla and Wanja and the donkey – yes, Abdulla’s donkey. They saved us. Their knowledge of the city, their contacts in the city, their unselfish involvement in our lives: all this saved us. Abdulla’s donkey wandered everywhere and women and children competed in giving it maize to eat from their own hands. This time nobody – not even Njuguna – complained about its eating habits. We often hired it to transport our things and foods and wares to and from the big markets at Ruwa-ini. So for a small fee it had become our donkey. People said that Abdulla was a good man. May the Lord bless him. Look at what he had done to Joseph. Sent him to school. And he, the unsung hero of our fight for freedom, is doing all the work in the shop on one leg and he never complains. He was at times withdrawn into himself, and we understood. In his relaxed moods, when in a good humour, he more than made up for it by his stories which were becoming part of Ilmorog lore.

Yes, it will rain. Crops will grow. We shall always remember the heroes in our midst. We shall always sing about the journey in the plains. May the Lord bless the old woman. But the drought will soon be a faint dream in a distant landscape. We say that the hunger of a thousand years is satisfied with one day’s cooking. May ill thoughts and frightening memories go with the drought! Only the epic journey. That would always be a thing to remember, and our MP had never come to explain, even. So let it be, we said in the opening months of
the new year: we did not then know that within a year the journey, like a God who cannot let his generosity be forgotten, would send its emissaries from the past, to transform Ilmorog and change our lives utterly, Ilmorog and us utterly changed.

That was yet to come. But at the time, well, at the beginning of the momentous period, we talked and whispered and gossiped about the chief and the policemen who would come and stay at the post for a week or so and then would go away. We also laughed at the churchmen who came all the way from the city or beyond to preach a sermon to empty benches. For nobody from Ilmorog would agree to go inside the new building.

2 ~ Godfrey Munira, who for a long time had abandoned his iron horse, was one day seen on it galloping furiously across Ilmorog, his shirt untucked at the back, flowing stiffly behind him, like a bird’s broken wing in the winds. He kept to himself mostly and was rarely seen even at Abdulla’s place.