Here Mugo found conditions worse than those in Manyani. Food rations were small.
Meat: 8 oz. per week.
Flour: 7 oz. per day.
It was here that Mugo was destined to meet John Thompson again.
Thompson’s sudden success in Yala was so impressive that he was immediately transferred to Rira. Thompson brought fresh breath to Rira. A common game in Rira had been to bury a man, naked, in the hot sand, sometimes leaving him there overnight. Thompson put an end to this means of extorting confessions. Instead he lectured the detainees in groups about the joys of home; they could go home to their wives and children as soon as they confessed the oath. This method had weakened resistance in other camps. Thompson hoped it would work the same magic. In his first month of reign, sanitation in Rira improved. Previously detainees suffering from typhoid were left to die. Now they were rushed to hospital.
When he considered the moment ripe, Thompson started calling them in singly into his office. His theory which had matured into a conviction over the years in administering Africans was: Do the unexpected. But here he met different men; men who would not even open their mouths, men who only stared at him. After two weeks he was driven by the men’s truculence to the edge of his patience. He went home and cried to Margery: These men are sick.
He hoped the third week would prove different. He leaned back in his chair and waited for the African warders to usher in the first man. Beside Thompson sat two other officers.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Mugo.’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Thabai.’
Thompson was relieved to find a man who at least agreed to answer questions. This was a good beginning. If one man confessed the oath, others would follow. He knew Thabai. He had been a District Officer in Rung’ei area twice; the last time being when he went to replace the murdered Robson. So for a few seconds he tried a friendly chat about Thabai: how green the landscape was, how nice and friendly its inhabitants. Then he resumed the questioning.
‘How many oaths have you taken?’
‘None.’
This sent Thompson to his feet. He paced up and down the room. Suddenly he faced Mugo. The man’s face seemed vaguely familiar. But then it was difficult to tell one black face from another: they looked so much alike, masks.
‘How many oaths have you taken?’
‘None.’
‘Liar!’ he shouted, sweating.
As for Mugo, he was indifferent to his fate. He was in that state of despair when a man perceives that all struggle is useless. You are condemned to die. Let the sword come quickly.
One of the officer’s whispered something to Thompson. He studied the man’s face for a while. Light dawned on him. He sent Mugo out of the room and carefully dived into the man’s record.
Thereafter things went from bad to worse. Many detainees never spoke. In fact, Mugo was the only one who consented to answer questions. But he only opened to repeat what he had said in all the camps. Thompson, like a tick, stuck to Mugo. He questioned him daily, perhaps because he seemed the likeliest to give in. He picked him up for punishment. Sometimes he would have the warders whip Mugo before the other detainees. Sometimes, in naked fury, he would snatch the whip from the warders and apply it himself. If Mugo had cried or asked for mercy Thompson might have relented. But now it seemed to him that all the detainees mocked and despised him for his failure to extort a cry from Mugo.
And that was how Mugo gained prestige among the other detainees. Beyond despair, there was no moaning; the feeling that he deserved all this numbed Mugo to the pain. But the other detainees saw his resignation to pain in a different light; it gave them courage; they came together and wrote a collective letter listing complaints. Among other things they wanted to be treated as political prisoners not criminals. Food rations should be raised. Unless these things were done, they would go on hunger-strike. And indeed on the third day, all the detainees, to a man, sat down on strike.
Thompson was on the edge of madness. Eliminate the vermin, he would grind his teeth at night. He set the white officers and warders on the men. Yes – eliminate the vermin.
But the thing that sparked off the now famous deaths, was a near-riot act that took place on the third day of the strike. As some of the warders brought food to the detainees, a stone was hurled at them and struck one of them on the head. They let go the food and ran away howling murder! Riot! The detainees laughed and let fly more stones.
What occurred next is known to the world. The men were rounded up and locked in their cells. The now famous beating went on day and night. Eleven men died.
This was foremost in the mind of Mugo as on the following day after his vision he walked towards Gikonyo’s home. In his miraculous escape from death, he now saw the guiding hand of fate. Surely he must have been spared in order that he might save people like Githua from poverty and misery. He, an only son, was born to save. The exciting possibilities of his new position agitated him and lured him on. He would tell Gikonyo his decision to lead the people of Thabai in the Uhuru celebrations. Thereafter, as a chief, he would lead his people across the desert to the new Jerusalem.
A song from the radio drifted to Mugo. A woman’s voice, live, full, almost drowned the soloist in the radio. The song moved slowly, sadly, a strange contrast to the vigorously bright morning. For a time he stood, hesitant, near the neatly cropped hedge surrounding the house. The L-shaped house was roofed with new shining corrugated-iron sheets, and the outside walls were made of thick cedar slabs. He stood there, letting Mumbi’s voice disturb him pleasantly, refusing to believe that discord could be hidden beyond the hedge. Wangari left the house, a sufuria in her hand, and walked towards a smaller house, also newly built, at the far corner of the compound. A small boy, whom Mugo took for the child in dispute, pranced ahead of Wangari, and this sight, for no apparent reason, gave him pain.
Mumbi welcomed him with a smile, her face lit up as if she had been expecting him. He looked back over the many years past and saw the young girl who once met him and expressed sympathy because of his aunt’s death. Now her face appeared tired and hardened. Maybe weary inside, he thought. He became conscious of her well-formed body; her dark eyes, infinitely deep, swallowed him, unsettled him, and he feared her.
‘I just wanted to see Gikonyo,’ he said, refusing the seat she offered. ‘Is he not in?’
‘He goes to work very early.’ Her voice was well controlled and clear, though Mugo detected a slight flow of lamentation below the surface of her words.
‘Will you not sit down?’ she went on. ‘You must. I shall quickly make you a cup of tea, it will be ready in a minute.’ Her voice grew animated, alive, he sat down in instinctive deference to her powerful presence. Studying her face, it occurred to him as odd that he rarely thought of Mumbi and Kihika as brother and sister. Her brows had the same Kihika curve, and her nose, though smaller, had a similar shape.
‘How is your brother – I – I mean your younger brother, you have one, haven’t you?’ He stirred the tea in the cup to hide his confusion.
‘Kariuki?’ She sat on a chair facing him.
‘That is the name, is that not so?’
‘You know he finished his secondary school about two years ago. Then he worked in Nairobi for a bank before going to Makerere College.’
‘That is in Uganda, Obote’s kingdom?’
‘Yes, he goes there by train. He says it takes a whole night and day to get there. How I feel envious … travelling by train all night and day…. I have never been on such a long journey by train.’ She laughed quietly; her eyes lit as if with the thought of travelling, her whole body expressive of a resilient desire for life despite suffering. ‘But he did not come home for the holidays this time, which is bad, because he will miss all the celebrations on Thursday.’
Mugo did not join in the talk about the celebrations, and the conversation ended abruptly. He searched for another subject, and failing, said he would leave.
He stood up.
But Mumbi remained sitting, her face set, as if she had not heard him.
‘I wanted to see you, and I would have come to you,’ she said. Though not above a whisper, her words reached him as a command. He sat down and waited.
‘Do you ever dream?’ she suddenly asked, a sad smile playing on her lips. The question startled Mugo, again raised the thrilling fear which lasted a few seconds before subsiding.
‘Yes, sometimes, that is, everybody dreams.’
‘I don’t mean ordinary dreams at night when you are asleep. It is when you are young in a clear day and you look into the future and you see great things. Your heart beats inside because you want the days to come quickly. Then Life’s sorrow cannot touch you.’
Her voice increased the tremor in Mugo. She was recreating his dream, dressing it in live words, breath.
‘Did you ever dream like that?’
‘Perhaps, sometimes,’ he started vaguely, but she quickly seized his answer.
‘And it came true. You dreamt – yes, I knew it could come true for some people. I used to have so many of those dreams, and all so real,’ she said, her voice and eyes and face digging into the past.
‘It happens … happens with … eh, people … when they are young.’ He risked the general comment.
‘It was there,’ she went on, ‘when my brother talked. My heart travelled with his words. I dreamt of sacrifice to save so many people. And although sometimes I feared, I wanted those days to come. Even when I got married, the dream did not die. I longed to make my husband happy, yes, but I also prepared myself to stand by him when the time came. I could carry his sheath and as fast as he shot into the enemy, I would feed him with arrows. If danger came and he fell, he would fall into my arms and I would bring him home safely to myself.’
He saw the light at the bottom of the pool dancing in her eyes. He felt her dark power over him.
‘Yet when they took him away, I did nothing, and when he finally came home, tired, I could no longer make him happy.’
She was still young, vulnerable; but it was he who was scurrying with hands and feet at the bottom of the silent pool. It was terrible for him, this struggle: he did not want to drown.
‘I sometimes wonder,’ she went on after a pause, ‘whether Wambuku dreamt. And yet, she – she – you remember her?’
‘Wambuku?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘But you must. Don’t you remember the woman you tried to save, the woman being beaten in the trench?’
‘Yes … yes.’ He could not recall her face except her dress torn by the whip and the impression of agony.
‘She died.’
‘Died?’
‘Yes. Later. People say she was pregnant, you see, about three or four months. She had been Kihika’s woman before he ran away to the forest. She never forgave him. But somehow she hoped he would come back to her and rarely went with anybody. But when Kihika was arrested and hanged on a tree, something strange came over her. For a few days she never left her home, and when she did so, eventually, well, she only destroyed herself with soldiers and homeguards, any man. But she refused, so it is said, the advances of this particular homeguard, who got his chance for revenge during the trench. She never recovered from that beating and died three months later, in pregnancy.’
She took out a handkerchief to rub something from her eyes. Just then her son came running into the room. He briefly looked at the man and then ran to his mother’s knees.
‘Why are you crying?’ he blurted out to his mother, and looked at Mugo with open hostility. Mumbi pressed the boy to herself as if she would protect him from all harm and destructive knowledge. She tried to smile and whispered words to him.
‘Run back to your grandmother, quick. You don’t want to leave her alone, do you? She may be stolen by an Irimu and then what will you say?’
The boy glanced at Mugo and back at Mumbi and ran out of the house.
‘You might say she died for my brother,’ Mumbi resumed, as if there had been no interruption, but her voice was less intense, was more hesitant. ‘A sacrifice…. And then there was Njeri.’
‘Who was she?’
‘She was also a friend, my friend. Wambuku and Njeri and I often went to the train together. But how could we tell that Njeri’s heart really ached for my brother? She often quarrelled and fought with both men and other girls. None of us, however, knew that she had secret dreams. Anyway, not until she ran away to the forest to fight at Kihika’s side. She was shot dead in a battle, soon after Kihika’s death.’
Mugo’s face was a shade darker, his lower lip had slightly dropped. He did not want to look at those things. He was already at the door when Mumbi’s startled voice called him, jerking him back to the present. He stood at the door recollecting himself with difficulty. As he slowly turned round, he felt ashamed that he could still be powerless before his impulses. Mumbi too had stood up and was barely able to cover her own surprise and confusion.
‘I have never talked these things to anybody,’ she said, sitting down again. ‘You make me feel able to talk and look at these things … strange, now that I remember…. Do you know my brother once, no, he said it often when angry with his friends, you make me remember it so well, he said that if he had something really secret and important, he would only confide in somebody like you.’
Mugo stood still, staring at her with vacant eyes. Leave me alone, he wanted to tell her, but he only whispered in a barely audible voice:
‘These things … painful …’
Mugo sat down, succumbing to her seductive power, weak before her eyes and voice. He waited while she struggled with words.
‘I wanted to talk to you about my husband,’ she said bluntly, looking straight at him. Gradually the defiant challenge in her eyes melted into silent, almost submissive pleading. Her parted lips trembled slightly.
‘I want him because, because I want him above everything else,’ she said. After a pause she seemed to ease. She asked: ‘You know about the child?’
Suddenly Mugo wanted to hurt her intensely. He revelled in this mad desire to humiliate her, to make her grovel in the dust: why did she try to drag him into her life, into everybody’s life?
‘Your husband told me.’
‘He told you?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’
‘Everything?’
‘Everything … the child … Karanja.’ He spoke bluntly, inwardly laughing with pain as he saw her wince, once or twice. The house was silent. Mugo’s eyes were hostile. Even if she wept openly, he would not leave, he would not move, and he would not say a word of comfort. But the next minute Mumbi broke into the charged atmosphere, excitedly, as if she had just remembered something big and important.
‘Did he tell you about the house, I mean our two huts? Did he?’
‘House – which house?’ he asked, genuinely puzzled.
‘Where we lived before they took him away – aah, I see he did not tell you,’ she went on with a sad triumph. ‘Who could have told him but me? But he does not want to know….’
Mugo remembered that those who did not move into the new village in time were ejected from their old homes; their huts were burnt down.
‘Even now, at night, in bed,’ she started. ‘I remember the red flames. There were two huts. One belonged to my mother, the other was mine. They told us to remove our bedding and clothes and utensils. They splashed some petrol on the grass-thatch of my mother’s hut. I then idly thought this was unnecessary as the grass was dry. Anyway, they poured petrol on the dry thatch. The sun burnt hot. My mother sat on a stool by the pile of things from our huts and I stood beside her. I had a Gikoi on my head. The leader of the homeguards struck a match and threw it at the roof. It did not light, and the others laughed at him. They shouted and encouraged him. One of them tried to take the matches from him to demonstrate how it could be done. It became a g
ame between them. At the fourth or fifth attempt the roof caught fire. Dark and blue smoke tossed from the roof, and the flames leapt to the sky. They went to my hut. I could not bear to see the game repeated, so I shut my eyes. I wanted to scream, but I must have lost my voice because no sound left my throat. I suddenly remembered my mother beside me, and I wanted to take her from the scene, to prevent her from seeing it all to the end. For those huts meant much to her because she had built them after Waruhiu, her husband in the Rift Valley, had divorced her from his side. Anyway, she pushed my hands away and she shook her head slightly and she went on staring at the flames. The roofs were cracking. I remember the pain as the cracking noise repeated in my heart. Soon the roofs of the huts fell in, one after the other, with a roar. I heard my mother gasp at the first roar. But she never let her eyes from the sight…. Something gave way in my heart, something in me cracked when I saw our home fall.’
The breakup at the old Thabai Village followed the fall of Mahee Police Post to Kihika and his band of Forest Fighters. The blow at Mahee had incensed the government. It is said that the black man in Nyeri, Mwangi Matemo, who, in a forgetful moment of enthusiasm, heard the news of the capture over the radio was instantly taken to Manyani, the most famous and the largest concentration camp in the country. The item had been censored; but the radio only confirmed what people all over Gikuyuland knew. The government retaliated. All African trading centres like Rung’ei were to be closed ‘in the interests of peace and security’. People were to move into fewer and less-scattered villages. At first this was a distant rumour; people shrugged their shoulders in disbelief and went on mourning the fate of those who had gone to detention or to the forest: would they ever return? Thomas Robson, then a District Officer, held barazas in every ridge, giving people two months within which to demolish the old and build new homes.
A Grain of Wheat Page 16
