Petals of Blood (49 page)

The breweries were owned by an Anglo-American international combine but of course with African directors and even shareholders. Three of the four leading local personalities were Mzigo, Chui and Kimeria.

Long live New Ilmorog! Long live Partnership in Trade and Progress!

5 ~ ‘What . . . what happened to Abdulla . . . and Wanja?’ Karega asked, interrupting Munira’s catalogue of the changes.

At last . . . at last the question he had dreaded. Is this why he had returned from a five-year exile and silence? Could it be that he still retained a spark of the memory of times past? Of her?

‘She is the most powerful woman in all Ilmorog. She owns houses between here and Nairobi. She owns a fleet of matatus. She owns a fleet of big transport lorries. She is that bird periodically born out of the ashes and dust.’

Suddenly Munira remembered his shock and the humiliation of being a guinea-pig. Bitterness returned. Why should he spare him?

‘Would you . . . would you like to see her?’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. Now.’

‘Isn’t it late?’

‘Well . . . it is not . . . for her . . . though we could ring her if you like.’

They went through the neon-lit streets. For Karega everything was familiar in a strange kind of way: he had seen similar towns all over Kenya. In any case, Nairobi, Thika, Kisumu, Nakuru, Mombasa were larger and older versions of the New Ilmorog. But both were conscious of an earlier journey to Wanja’s hut: how long ago it all seemed now! Munira often interrupted the silence by telling him who owned what: and it seemed as if every prominent person in the country now owned a bit of Ilmorog: from the big factory to the shanty dwellings. ‘Yes . . .’ Munira was saying. ‘Even these falling-apart workers’ houses . . . you’ll be surprised to see the landlords who come to collect the rent . . . No
shame . . . they drive in their Mercedes Benzes . . . and they have been known to lock the poor souls out. Occasionally, the Town Council has a clean-up, burn-down campaign . . . but surprisingly . . . it is the shanties put up by the unemployed and the rural migrant poor which get razed to the ground. And do you see those kiosks by the road? A year ago there was a big scandal about them. Some County Councillors and officials were allocated them . . . free . . . and then sold them for more than fifty thousand shillings to others who rent them out to women petty traders . . . and now let me take you through our New Jerusalem,’ Munira continued with his chatter.

He was like a tourist guide and he seemed to enjoy the role. Karega walked beside him in silence, turning over the comments in his mind. The story he listened to, so cruelly illustrated by what he saw with his eyes, contained a familiar theme, a common theme shared by the other places he had been to all over the Republic. But it was no less depressing. Munira abruptly stopped by a mud-walled barrack of a house with several doors partitioning it into several separate rooms.

‘Here . . . Here is Abdulla’s place,’ he announced. ‘As you can see, it’s right at the centre of the New Jerusalem. Do you want to greet him before we proceed to Wanja’s place?’

‘Yes,’ Karega said.

Munira knocked at the door calling out a loud hodi, and Abdulla, from the inside, responded in a drunken voice. They heard the bolts creak. Abdulla threw open the door, but instead of welcoming them with greetings of recognition he went on with complaints against ‘people who keep on waking up and disturbing peaceful citizens’. Then he saw it was Munira.

‘Ooh, it’s you . . . my friend . . . come in, come in. I have a few five-shilling packets of Theng’eta. Theng’a Theng’a with Theng’eta. Ha! ha! ha! Come in.’

He sat on the bed and invited Munira to take the folding chair, the only chair in the place.

‘And don’t knock down the hurricane lamp,’ Abdulla went on. Then he noticed that Munira was not alone.

‘Oh! Oh! And you have brought a visitor. Let him take the chair. You, Munira, my friend, come and sit on the bed. And be careful.
Rubber straps make up the springs. And you know some time ago I sat too heavily on it and the straps broke. I was really sprung up and then brought down, onto the floor. And who is your visitor? Does he also take Theng’eta? Mwalimu’s formula. P=3T. Drink the drink of three letters.’

‘Do you not recognize him?’ Munira asked when they all had sat down.

‘Who? This silence?’

‘Karega . . .’

‘Karega.’

‘Yes.’

‘Karega! Karega, Nding’uri’s brother . . . But how . . . You have really grown. A Mzee like myself . . . you only need a few tufts of grey . . . But which corner of the world did you spring from?’

Karega explained briefly. But he saw that Abdulla was not really following him. He had changed: hollow tired eyes in hollow caves. They tried this and that subject but nothing seemed to flow freely.

‘All the same, welcome to this bachelor’s corner,’ Abdulla repeated. ‘A bit different from my old place! But that was old Ilmorog. They made us demolish the house. And now look at the place they have brought us to.’

‘And whose house is this, then?’ Karega asked.

‘This . . . and a few others belong to a very important person in authority.’

‘You mean, Him? This?’ Karega asked.

‘Yes. He charges a hundred shillings for this one room. So from the block he makes a thousand shillings a month. And he owns about ten blocks. That’s ten thousand shillings. Just for putting up a few poles and mudding them. He comes in a Range Rover and he parks by the road. He sends his driver/bodyguard to collect the rent.’

‘But he comes . . . he earns more than sixty thousand shillings a day from transporting sugar and hardware for the McMillan sugar works. And this on top of his official government salary!’

‘Well. That makes it sixty thousand plus ten thousand and that comes to seventy thousand shillings,’ Abdulla said.

‘It’s the way of the world,’ Munira added. ‘He probably owns other
slums in other cities. In our Kenya you can make a living out of anything. Even fear. Look at the British company that owns and runs security guards in this country. Every house, every factory has a Securicor guard. They should set up a Ministry of Fear.’

‘A Ministry for Slum Administration and Proper Maintenance of Slum Standards, would be better,’ Abdulla added. He turned to Karega. ‘You left me a shopkeeper. I am still one – an open-air shopkeeper. I sell oranges by the roadside.’

‘Munira told me that Joseph went to Siriana.’ Karega suddenly said, as if to brighten up the conversation. ‘It is very good news. He was a bright boy. I hope he will not go the way Munira and I went.’

‘All the ways go the same way for us poor,’ Abdulla explained. ‘Oh, I forgot to give you something to drink. Theng’eta. I have one or two packets.’

He leaned over the bed and picked a packet of Theng’eta. ‘Did you ever taste it, Karega?’

‘Yes. In Mombasa once. I was surprised to see it on sale . . . but it did not taste the same. I used to wonder how it came into commercial use.’

‘Then drink it again. It almost made me . . . well, almost made us. But it ruined us.’

‘I think these drinks are made to keep people drunk to drug their minds, so they don’t ask questions or do something about their misery,’ mused Karega aloud, recalling in his mind all the places that he had been, and all the potent drinks that were brewed there: Chang’aa, Kang’ari, Kill-me-Quick and Chibuku, the last now run by an African director of a London Rhodesia company.

‘It’s as I said,’ Abdulla continued with his train of thought, ‘all ways for the poor go one way. One-way traffic to more poverty and misery. Poverty is sin. But imagine. It’s the poor who are held responsible for the sin that is poverty and so they are punished for it by being sent to hell. Hell to hell. Ha! ha! My only bright spot in this hell has been Joseph. That’s why I think there is hope. And to know that he is not really my brother,’ Abdulla suddenly let out and this jolted them all from their seats.

‘Not your brother?’ Karega echoed.

‘What, what do you mean?’ asked Munira at the same time.

‘Yes. Not my brother. He is more of a son to me. And yet he is not my son. But what does it matter?’ Abdulla asked. A change came over his voice, over his face, he was more introspective and now there was no foolery or bitterness in his tone, and they listened as yet another Abdulla emerged before their very eyes.

‘Before you left Ilmorog I told you about my return from detention . . . well, I did not tell you everything. My father used to own a shop at the old Rongai market at Limuru. It was a famous place because he owned a radio, and in the early days of the Emergency people crowded the shop to hear the news read by Mwangi Matemo. My father belonged to the KCA and he always liked to tell how it was they had sent Kenyatta to England, defying the colonial Government, how they used to raise money to maintain him in comfort in England in order to agitate properly for our land. Well, after I had been forced to flee to the forest before my time was due, I somehow kept contact with him. You know our place in Kinyogri area. It was just across from the settled area where tea bushes often formed our hide-outs. But after they were moved to the new concentration village at Kihingo I lost all contact. So you see that during my days in detention I really missed my family and I longed for the day that I would return. Our day for a Family Reunion. Well, friend, the day never came. Or rather, it did come. And I trembled at the sight of Limuru land, at the sight of Kihingo hill, Manguo valley, all the green land. I went to the new village. I urgently inquired about my father and about my mother and about my brothers. And people turned their eyes away. My heart beat with the pain of wanting to know, and they would not tell me except at last for one woman who said it bluntly: “You are a man, you have suffered . . . But you can bear it!” “Bear what?” I asked, somehow knowing the truth. “During the digging of the trenches . . . one night . . . all wiped out . . . British soldiers and their Home Guard running-dogs . . .” I did not know how to bear it, and for days and weeks I hobbled about with the same song in my head: so they had killed all my family and I alone was left. I thought . . . aaaa! But what’s the use . . . what’s the use . . . then I recalled that Kimathi had lost his brothers and that his mother had gone crazy and that he himself was
later killed and all this for the sake of our struggle . . . But still . . . the wound . . . it was hard, and only the knowledge that all that which we had fought for would soon be done . . . land of honey and wine . . . kept me a little alive. Well, you know what followed the raising of our flag . . . It’s good so, I mean our flag, but . . . Anyway I bought my donkey . . . I carted women’s goods to the market and there at the place where the big shoe company throws the factory waste it is also where the shopowners who had taken over from the Indian traders threw their rubbish – anyway there, one day, I found him. He was a child . . . scrounging for something to eat in the rubbish heap. He got a piece of bread and the others fell on him, claiming that he had caught the piece from their own corner in the heap . . . He was pleading with them, they chased him, and he ran away toward Limuru sawmills. My donkey almost ran him over . . . anyway I caught him and the others ran away. “What’s your name?” I asked after he had told me the cause of the war. “I have no name, I mean, I don’t know . . .” “What about your father and mother?” They had gone away. “What about your brothers?” They too had gone away. None had returned, but he always hoped they would return! I thought, no, I did not even think about it, but the lie seemed natural and the words came out sure and smooth. Even the name. “Joseph Njiraini,” I called out, shaking him by the shoulder. “My little brother . . . I am the brother, the one who went away, and I am back . . .” I took him home and he did not protest or anything and I have never really known if he believed me or not. After a few weeks, I had my doubts . . . but I hoped that what with my one leg he would be useful . . . errands here and there . . . It was like that until Wanja saved me from looking at him that way . . . and I must say now I never regret . . . not these last days anyway . . .’

They moved on toward Wanja’s place. They did not discuss Abdulla’s extraordinary story.

Wanja’s wood mansion was really impressive, a contrast to Abdulla’s hovel. A hedge of well trimmed pines and creeping plants and bougainvillaea and other flowers surrounded it. A nice aromatic smell hung about the courtyard of beautifully neatly mowed grass
with a pattern of words, LOVE IS POISON. A girl opened the door and showed them into a spacious sitting-room. She brought them drinks on a trolley: Tusker, Pilsner, Theng’eta Gin, whisky, Kenya Cane. Karega took whisky: Munira helped himself to Theng’eta Gin. It always pained him that his slogan had been taken from him: but at the same time he felt a secret writer’s thrill whenever he read the slogan in newspapers and on the labels. The girl sat down and told them that ‘Mama’ would soon see them: meanwhile did they want music? Jim Reeves . . . Jim Brown . . . Kung Fu Fighting/Bumping . . . Sukusus . . . Ali Shuffle . . . Theng’eta Twist . . . anything . . . Without waiting for an answer she put on
Huni cia Gita
, composed by Elijah Mburu:

On the wall hung old paintings of an English countryside . . . the inscription: ‘Christ is the head of the family’ . . . Martha anointing Christ with oil. On the table were wooden Akamba carvings of giraffes and rhinos. Almost as soon as the record was over, the girl had somehow vanished and Wanja in an almost see-through dress stood before them. Her lipstick was now less crude and merged with her face, and her Afro-wig matched her big body. She had grown. She had put on weight and this gave her physical presence and power.