Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (8 page)

‘What are you doing in my things?'

‘Who is this?' Raj ignored the man's annoyance and held up the photo.

‘
Baap-re-baap!
' The owner smacked his forehead in exclamation. ‘What rock have you been living under, boy? That's Pio.
Pee-O
. Doesn't your father teach you anything?'

‘What does he do?' His curiosity made him unashamed of his ignorance.

‘He's a freedom fighter – helped ship all those dandy-looking white fellows back to Eng-
laand
.'

That evening, Raj sneaked the picture out of the man's storage room, folded lovingly in the breast pocket of his shirt. He spent the night locked up in his room, searching within the photograph for an answer to a need he could not identify. There was an arresting air to the man, dressed in a button-down sweater vest and striped tie, his arms thrown out in modest victory. Pio was the only one looking directly into the camera; the faces of the men upon whose shoulders he sat were all upturned.

The following week, Raj hungrily snatched up any information he could gather about the man, whether it was from the old newspapers his mother kept for cleaning and sorting rice, from his father or uncle or any other adult he managed to corner – and discovered that what the old shopkeeper had told him was true. Raj had accidentally stumbled upon one of Kenya's first freedom fighters, and an Indian one at that.

‘Brave man,' Raj's uncle, Dilip, informed him. ‘He returned from India to become involved in the local movement here, even supplied them with weapons. And in the middle of the night, he would put up political posters throughout the city, moving like a superhero. No one could catch him.'

‘Must have been exciting,' Raj mused.

‘But also very dangerous. See, for all his troubles, Pio was detained in 1954. But you wouldn't remember – you were only a young boy.'

Raj gripped the plastic covering of the dining table, steam clouds of heat beneath his fingers. ‘For how long?'

‘He was released five years later but do you think that stopped him?' Dilip Uncle shook his head. ‘Of course not. He continued fighting to set Kenyatta free, and after that was achieved he helped ensure the KANU victory in the 1961 elections.' His uncle scooped up handfuls of white rice and dal,
pausing to contemplate. When he spoke again, flecks of yellow lentils hopped out between his words. ‘I met him once, you know. Ran into him on the street, just like that. So unassuming he was, but very clever. I could tell he was special straight away, just by looking at him.'

‘Take me to meet him.'

At that, Dilip Uncle had howled. Dropped his mouth open so wide that Raj had glimpsed the pinkly quivering tonsils. ‘
Uh-reh!
He's a very busy man. Why on earth would he want to meet you?'

So after discovering that Pinto lived in Westlands, Raj rode his bike to the bustling district and parked inside the scratchy lantana bushes crowding the gate, hoping to sight the white Saab motor vehicle the man was known for driving.

Blackened with age, Pinto's house ran long and low across a tangle of undergrowth and from the doorway to the gate there weaved a narrow driveway of flattened mud. From his position, Raj caught movements in the window and detected faint outlines of a living room, smelled roasted coffee and eggs and his stomach growled.

He was there every day for the next three weeks, an apple in his pocket or an omelette sandwich wrapped in tin foil. One day he took leftover fish curry along with a piece of thick white bread and ate it cold as he learned the man's routine off by heart, tracked through his scratched toy binoculars.

Breakfast at seven thirty, seated in the kitchen nook surrounded by falling sunlight, Pinto engrossed himself in the newspaper until the sounds of his family distracted him; a wife and three daughters. At their voices, he would fold the paper in his lap and wait as they came up, one by one, for a morning kiss. Pinto would then disappear upstairs and his youngest daughter would come out of the house, bundled up for the chilly morning in a woolen sweater. She would play on the driveway, squat down on her haunches and search for whatever treasure her young mind conjured up, her delighted shouts disturbing the still air.

Some days, Pinto would join her early, dressed for work in an ironed white shirt and pressed trousers, always completed with a button-down sweater vest. His hair would be slicked back and he would pick up his daughter – ‘How about we go for a ride today?' – and put her in the front seat of his Saab. They would drive the short, winding distance to the gate and back again. Pinto would repeat this several times – sometimes he would keep going until his wife came out looking for him.

‘We're going to be late.'

And his daughter would be plucked from the car by her nanny, still clinging to her father's fingers as Pinto's wife waved goodbye in the rising tire dust, the couple making their way out onto the main street. There Raj would be, huddled behind the itchy leaves of the lantana bush, ducking bees and swatting mosquitoes.

Twenty-one days passed in this manner until, one morning, Raj was digging at an elbow scab and waiting for Pinto to leave at eight thirty, just as he always did, when the car slowed down more than usual. Raj looked up and, to his nervous surprise, saw the driver's window roll down as it approached his hiding spot. He saw the man he had been watching from a distance for so many days now and was taken aback by how large he was – how real – when not viewed in a newspaper clipping or through binoculars.

‘Hello there.' The voice was unassuming, bouncing with friendliness. An arm extended outward, gesturing for Raj to come closer. But he stayed fixed to the ground and even the greedy mosquitoes pinching his skin were not enough to force him out onto the road. ‘I won't hurt you. I only want to answer your question.'

Intrigued, Raj took a small step forward. ‘What question?'

‘You must have one,' replied Pinto, pausing mid-sentence as Raj came the full way out, taking fairy-steps toward the Saab, where he saw that the man was alone. ‘Otherwise you wouldn't be waiting here every day.'

Pinto was right. The purpose of Raj's visit had been lost in all the excitement at seeing the man in the flesh, but now as he looked upon the wide-browed young man he remembered it again.

He asked, ‘How did you do it?'

Smiling as if it were a question he was used to, Pinto returned with, ‘What exactly do you mean by
it
?'

‘How did you become a hero?'

Eyebrows shooting up; this version of the question was new to him, a strange and uncomfortable thought. ‘Who told you I was a hero?'

‘Everyone says so. They say that you're brave, that you freed us from the
Wazungu
. That even the Africans trust you.'

Pinto's index finger tapped against the steering wheel, his face clouded. ‘Is that what you want? To become a hero?'

Raj's heart picked up its pace as the dream purred inside him. ‘Isn't that what you do?'

The car turned off, returning the morning to its previous, bird-filled silence. Pinto pushed open the heavy door and his movements were so agile, so practiced at being invisible, that he was on one knee and face level with Raj before the boy knew what was happening. ‘Truth be told,' Pinto started, ‘we all want to be heroes. We all want to make that difference in that moment of time, to be admired for our bravery and respected for our actions.'

With every word, Raj nodded.
Admired. Respected.
They were the fingers that plucked at his dream, strumming it awake.

‘But as long as you want to be a hero, you will never become one.'

Raj's excitement faltered. ‘I don't understand.'

‘People think I'm brave for spending all those years in jail, for putting up some posters on walls and helping others, but it's not because I'm courageous or a hero,' Pinto explained. ‘It's because I know what is right and I'm willing to fight for it.'

‘And what is that?'

Pinto rose, dusted off his cotton-clad knees. He was a slim man, younger than Raj had thought, but there was a peculiar grace about him, an oldness of soul that Raj understood was what made Dilip Uncle say that the man was special. Back in the car now, the smile once again on his face, Pinto asked, ‘Do you know why the Africans trust me?'

A shake of a small head, eager bristles of hair gleaming in the sun.

‘Because I trust them. Because we work together as equals and treat each other as such, as Kenyans fighting for the same cause. That is what's right.' As the car revved loudly, Pinto shouted over its sound. ‘Next time you want to ask me something, knock on my door.' And he was gone, a cream car in a flurry of dark red dust.

That evening at the dinner table, it emerged that Pinto was in trouble.

Raj's father banged his fist down. ‘
Eh pagal hogaya?
He'll be killed for it, just wait and see.'

A story was spreading through Nairobi that Pinto and his socialist comrades were plotting a parliamentary coup after their demands for a ceiling distribution of wealth and just rewards for the Mau-Mau freedom fighters was brushed off by the president, swatted away within the gold tassels of his fly whip.

‘He discovered that the
mzee
had allocated himself over fifty farms in Central Province and Rift Valley. That he will be displacing all the Kikuyu squatters and other farmers to make room for his fat cronies. No better than the colonialists,' Dilip Uncle had said. ‘What else could he have done?'

‘Not called our president a bastard, for one,' Raj's father had replied. ‘I'm surprised he wasn't killed there and then.'

‘Well, the
mzee
did call him one first.'

And then, one misty February morning, Raj's father came to break the news to him. ‘Now,
beta
,
I don't want you to be too upset…'

Pinto had been killed, shot at the gate of his house, riddled with bullets from those exact bushes Raj used to hide within, his nose irritated by the woody wild flowers.

‘Must have been desperate.' He heard his father and uncle speaking in low tones later that day as he lay upstairs in his bed, trying to understand his grief. ‘To do it in broad daylight and right outside his house! In front of his daughter and on that busy street.'

‘Time to leave this place,' Raj's aunt had warned. ‘'I told you, they don't want us here.'

Raj had been devastated. He'd mourned as if he had lost a loved one, someone as close to him as his mother or sister, but somehow worse because, without Pinto, that budding dream of his lost direction. It wandered and tripped, became afraid of itself and hid tightly away under a horde of questions that would forever go unanswered.

The picture of Pinto was framed and hung up on his bedroom wall and Raj tucked his dreams behind the glass so that they would always be close to him. Then he did what his father advised and moved on with his life, because it was silly to hang onto the dead and all the doubt that came with them.

He met Pooja when he was nineteen, working as an accountant at the family's fish shop and, over a shared bottle of coke, he told her the story of Pio Gama Pinto and of his aspirations and she fell in love with him and his eyes, which were as quick and bright as his words.

Following the death of his uncle, Raj's father sold the fish shop and started a small used furniture store where their main clientele were local Africans. It was during this time that Raj began to put into practice what little advice he had received from Pinto.

Unlike his father, Raj was friendly with his African customers and employees, reprimanding the older man for calling them ‘thieves', ‘lazy idiots' and ‘monkeys.'

‘But they're stealing from us,' his father had protested. ‘You should know – you're the one doing the books.'

‘Not all of them,' Raj had corrected him. ‘And yes, some of them are thieves but there are also Indian thieves – and big ones too. Stealing millions of shillings from our country… so what can you say about them?'

But the full realization of his dreams remained constantly out of his reach. Raj often blamed it on the fact that he was running a business, had become a husband and a father and that these things occupied enormous spaces in his life, leaving room for little else. He also knew that he was partly responsible – that though his dreams were beautiful, they were also terrifying and he had been slightly frightened to catch up to them.

So, early on in his son's life, when Raj recognized something in Jai that was reminiscent of his own idealism, he took it upon himself to nurture the boy, to teach him the lessons he had learned from Pinto – to mold Jai's rapidly adjusting mind and body into strong, hard shapes so that fear would never fit into him.

Which was why, upon seeing Angela's son approach Leena as she played marbles, Raj had immediately sent Jai out.

‘See that boy with your sister? I want you to help him with whatever he needs.'

Now the street was empty and Jai was emerging from the veranda, kicking a small stone ahead of him. At sixteen, his father had been a clueless boy, but Jai carried within him a solid sense of conviction – a steel framework of principle that few men Raj knew possessed – and it made his chest puff out with pride.

It was as if the boy had come to him at just the right time – when Raj was old enough that his dreams were beginning to change, break down and turn cruel, morphing into painful regrets.

‘He's Angela's son,' Pooja informed her family once they were all seated at the table. She was hot and bothered, having had to lean over the stove for half an hour, deep-frying the pooris. Normally, Angela would have made them but Pooja had allowed her to go home early.

She fanned out her loose tunic, blowing down the collar. ‘He was living in Eldoret with his grandmother but she passed away from a serious bout of malaria.'