A Grain of Wheat

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  ’ “Your husband is coming back."

  ’ “What?"

  ’ “Your husband is coming back,” he repeated and tried to smile.

  ‘Something that caused pain rippled in me, as if, as if I had been paralysed all over and blood and life was now entering into me.

  ’ “Please, Karanja, don’t play with me,” I stammered. My voice was broken. My heart was full of fear and hope. I would have done anything to know the truth.

  ‘He came to where I was standing and showed me a long sheet of paper with the government stamps. There was a list of names of those on their way back to the villages. Gikonyo’s name was there.

  ‘What else is there to tell you? That I remember being full of submissive gratitude? That I laughed – even welcomed Karanja’s cold lips on my face? I was in a strange world, and it was like if I was mad. And need I tell you more?

  ‘I let Karanja make love to me.’

  She paused. The light still played in her dark voluptuous eyes. She was young. She was beautiful. A big lump blocked Mugo’s throat. Something heaved forth; he trembled; he was at the bottom of the pool, but up there, above the pool, ran the earth; life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful; only for a moment; how dared he believe in such a vision, an illusion?

  ‘When I woke and realized fully what had happened, I became cold, the whole body. Karanja tried to say nice things to me, but I could see he was laughing at me with triumph. I took one of his shoes and I threw it at him. I ran out, and I could not cry. Although a few minutes before, I had been so happy, now I only felt sour inside. I went to Wangari and this time I cried and I could not clearly tell her what had happened. But she seemed to understand, and she held me to her and tried to remove my shivers with words.’

  Listening to Mumbi’s story had drained Mugo of strength. He now searched for fitting words to break his silence.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he cried, weak with pain and longing.

  She was about to say something when there was a hurried knock at the door and ‘hodi’. General R. entered, closely followed by Lt Koina. The General’s face beamed with satisfaction, which Mugo had not seen on Sunday night or the night before. Koina, on the other hand, looked pensive, aged.

  ‘We are not staying for long,’ General R. said after taking a seat. He then turned to Mugo. He appeared more friendly and more voluble than usual.

  ‘I came to your place. When I did not find you there, well, I thought I would come this way. I told you I would visit you? Remember last night? You appeared worried, or very excited. Didn’t see anybody. I spoke to you outside but you only answered in a borrowed voice. A strange man, Githua? Did you hear what he said about bullets?’

  ‘I can’t – I can’t remember—’

  ‘You see! I said your mind was not on this earth. Githua is always telling people how he used to supply us with bullets. Do you know that he never once gave us bullets (Maize grains as we called them in the forest).’

  ‘Didn’t he?’ Mumbi asked.

  ‘Never. I’ve also learnt that he was never shot by anybody.’

  ‘How did he break his leg?’ Mumbi asked.

  ‘His leg? The lorry he drove overturned in Nakuru. Githua’s left leg was smashed to bits.’

  ‘Why, then—’

  ‘It makes his life more interesting to himself. He invents a meaning for his life, you see. Don’t we all do that? And to die fighting for freedom sounds more heroic than to die by accident.’

  Mugo felt let down by Githua. He was again alone, his vision disrupted by Mumbi and General R. He winced from the direct gaze of the General. Where was the warmth which had enveloped him last night, this morning, before he entered Mumbi’s house?

  ‘But let’s leave Githua alone. We came to see you,’ General R. said to Mugo.

  ‘Shall I leave the room?’ Mumbi asked, making ready to rise.

  ‘Not unless you want to. This concerns your brother.’

  ‘Kariuki? Has anything happened?

  ‘No, Kihika!’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘As I said on Sunday night, we believe that Kihika certainly walked into a trap. He was going to meet an important contact. Now, there are only three people he could have gone to meet. One of them is Wambui. But Kihika had already sent Wambui to Nakuru with messages to our agents. The other man is you!’ he said, fixing Mugo with a glance. Mugo’s belly tightened.

  ‘But every child knows what you did for Kihika and what the whiteman did to you.’

  ‘Who is the man?’ Mumbi asked, relieved.

  ‘A friend and not a friend. What was it Kihika used to say? Kikulacho kiko nguoni mwako.’

  ‘Who is he?’ she insisted, impatiently.

  ‘You see Kihika had once or twice said he wanted to meet Karanja.’

  ‘Ngai!’ she exclaimed and looked at Mugo.

  ‘And it was soon after Kihika’s arrest that Karanja became a homeguard. His behaviour at Githima points to his guilt. Koina here was there yesterday.’

  Koina started and looked at the General. His face looked weary, a little pained.

  ‘And I’ll never go back there. Never. Never,’ he said in a voice totally unlike his lighthearted self. Mumbi and the General looked at him.

  ‘What is the matter?’ the General asked.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Koina said. ‘It is only that I am puzzled about the meaning of what I saw there. But don’t mind me. I am not feeling well.’

  ‘You must go to bed,’ Mumbi said anxiously. ‘Do you want some Aspro?’

  ‘Oh, it’s only a small headache!’

  ‘What did you see at Githima that makes you ill?’ Mumbi asked. ‘Ghosts?’

  ‘Yes … Some kind of ghosts. But they were ghosts that make me wonder about what we are really celebrating!’

  General R. thought of asking him to talk less mysteriously, but Mugo spoke first.

  ‘What – what do you – did you want with me?’ Mugo, who had been following his own thoughts, released his breath slowly.

  ‘It is about the celebrations on Thursday. Let me first of all tell you that I never prayed to God. I never believed in Him. I believe in Gikuyu and Mumbi and in the black people of this our country. But one day I did pray. One day in the forest alone, I knelt down and cried with my heart. God, if you are there above, spare me and I’ll find Kihika’s real murderer. The time has come. The season is ripe for harvest. On Thursday people will gather in Rung’ei Market to remember Kihika. At Githima we have set Mwaura to persuade Karanja to attend this meeting. So what will you do? At the end of your speech, you’ll announce that the man who betrayed Kihika should come forward – and stand condemned before the people. For in betraying Kihika, to the whiteman, Karanja had really betrayed the black people everywhere on the earth.’

  The General’s impassioned speech was followed by an uneasy silence. Each man in the house seemed absorbed in his own life – in his own fears and hopes. The atmosphere was tense – like a taut rope. Suddenly Mugo stood up, trembling, in the tension of a sudden decision.

  ‘That cannot be,’ he said. ‘I came here to tell Gikonyo and the Party that I am not a fit man to lead them. The Party should look elsewhere for a leader.’

  His voice was choked. He struggled to bring out another word, and then unexpectedly rushed out.

  Ten

  The decision to persuade, or failing that, compel Karanja to attend the big ceremony at Rung’ei had been taken the previous night after Lt Koina had met Mwaura.

  Mwaura’s reports had only confirmed what General R. had always suspected: Karanja was the man who had betrayed Kihika. That Karanja should die on Independence Day seemed just: that he should be humiliated in front of a huge crowd, if he gave himself up, or else be made uncomfortable, was only a necessary preparation for the ritual.

  General R. was a man of few words, except when he was excited. ‘I can’t use my tongue,’ he used to say with a streak of pride, ‘but I can use my hands.’ Kihi
ka would pray and agonize over a problem, General R. acted. Kihika talked of oppression, and injustice, and freedom; General R. saw oppressed persons, or a cruel or a good man. He was something of an adventurer. Before the War of Independence he had lived in Rung’ei centre working as a tailor. Nobody knew of his origins: some said that he had come from Nyeri and others said his home was in Embu. Although he had lived in Rung’ei for many years, people in Thabai regarded him as a stranger in their midst. ‘These from that side of Nyeri and Embu,’ they would say, ‘are people to be feared; you never know what they may carry in their fingernails or under their armpits.’ People did not even know his real name: they all called him Ka-40, because once or twice, in one of his sudden but rare moments of self-revelation, he would sing his own praises thus: ‘See me, a young man of ‘40. I was born in 1940, circumcised in 1940, went to fight Hitler in 1940, and married in 1940. So me, I am a young man of ‘40.’ (To people’s knowledge, he had no wife, but he had fought for the British in the Second World War.)

  Otherwise he was quiet, rarely talked about himself or about his political beliefs, and noticeably avoided wild scenes and brawls that so often flared up in eating-houses and drinking places. Ka-40 was a good and successful tailor, specializing in clothes for women and children; his prosperity was attributed to ‘something under the armpit’.

  Yet this man, who clearly shunned quarrels and violence and mostly kept alone, became one of the most fierce of Kihika’s band of Forest Fighters, feared in the village and even among his followers. General R. never forgot a friend or enemy. R. stood for Russia.

  At the time that General R. was talking excitedly about the little drama to be enacted on Independence Day, Karanja, the main actor, was preoccupied with a problem which, three months before seemed small – viewed, of course, as a distant possibility – but which, Independence being only two nights away, had now assumed monstrous proportions: would Thompson really go? Today Karanja was determined to find out the truth, an inkling of which he had once tasted, when, as a Chief, he had been told that Gikonyo and other detainees were coming back to the village. Now he would go to Thompson and say: Sir, are you really abandoning Kenya? Not that between Karanja and John Thompson there had developed a relationship that might be called personal; nor was the consciousness of dependency mutual; only that to Karanja, John Thompson had always assumed the symbol of whiteman’s power, unmovable like a rock, a power that had built the bomb and transformed a country from wild bush and forests into modern cities, with tarmac highways, motor vehicles and two or four legs, railways, trains, aeroplanes and buildings whose towers scraped the sky – and all this in the space of sixty years. Had he himself not experienced that power, which also ruled over the souls of men, when he, as a Chief, could make circumcised men cower before him, women scream by a lift of his finger?

  So Karanja waited for the terrible knowledge. Twice he had gone along the corridors past Thompson’s office, his ears set for any movement inside. Back in his own workroom, Karanja remembered that he could tell whether John Thompson was in or out by checking if his ‘Another Morris’ was stationed at its permanent place in the Staff Car Park. He rose from the chair like a man who unexpectedly sits on a drawing-pin, only instead of examining the seat, he craned his neck and peered at – at an empty place normally occupied by the Morris. Was the man not coming to work today? He found it difficult to write labels for any of the books on the table. It was lucky that Mrs Dickinson was not there today. He went to the bindery to kill time with the men there. Karanja always went there with this or that pretext whenever he was tired. Most of the binders came from Central Nyanza and Karanja always felt freer in their presence. He did not feel, as he did with the Gikuyus, that they were probing into his past. He also despised them and said so when talking with Mwaura or any other men of his tribe. ‘These Jaluo!’ he would say, ‘they always stick together: once you put one of them in charge of a place, he invited all his tribesmen whenever a vacancy occurs.’ They on their part were suspicious of him. ‘These Wakikuyu – never trust them. A Kikuyu will embrace you as a friend today and tomorrow knife you in the back.’ In his presence, they were friendly.

  He found them talking about the late Dr Van Dyke. Had his death been an accident? What did that little Thompson woman (my God, she’s pretty – her buttocks, man – wouldn’t mind giving her the works myself) see in that pot-bellied Boer? Did Thompson know he was being double-crossed? He must have known. That’s why he was always so sad. Did he himself taste other women, like Dr Lynd? Ha! Ha! Ha! They changed to the dog incident. They became angry. They sympathized with Karanja. Man! Thompson saved you. But he won’t punish her. Karanja found the smell of the boiling glue, the men’s talk and laughter, did not soothe his restless nerves. He went out and walked between the Soil Physics Laboratory and the main administrative block, affecting business-purposefulness, but really hoping to catch sight of John Thompson in the office through the window. Had the man gone, Karanja wondered? He should have asked him yesterday. Yesterday after the dog incident. Karanja recalled his terror as the dog approached him. He shuddered. Thompson had saved him from shame. Thompson. And he was going. He strolled back to his room, heavy with a sense of imminent betrayal.

  He had once before experienced a similar feeling. That was the day, soon after the State of Emergency was officially lifted, that the reigning DO advised him to resign his post as Chief. Then new Party political leaders like Oginga Odinga were agitating for Independence and the release of Jomo Kenyatta. Karanja arrested a man who had not paid poll-tax for two years. The man had been without a job since he left detention. He was so angry that instead of answering questions, he spat on the dust. The Chief did exactly what he was used to doing: he had the man beaten by his bodyguard, and locked him up at the Homeguard Post until morning. The matter was taken up by men connected with Odinga, and in this way reached the courts. Karanja was compelled to pay a fine and make a public apology. This had cut him to the quick. Why should he be punished for doing exactly what he had been praised for doing a month or so before? Later Karanja was demoted. The DO, however, gave him a letter of recommendation listing Karanja’s qualities of faithfulness, integrity and courage. ‘You can wholly depend on him.’ Armed with the letter (it bore a government seal) Karanja had drifted to Githima, where he again met John Thompson. Karanja had confessed his oath and registered as a homeguard when Thompson was the DO in the District (soon after Robson died), and although Thompson did not seem to remember the old days, Karanja felt the ‘government’ letter was itself a live link. He got a job at Githima. And soon his qualities of faithfulness, integrity and courage revealed themselves, and he quickly became a trusted servant of the white people at Githima.

  Was the dog’s threat a prelude to disaster, thought Karanja? In his consciousness of an imminent disaster, Karanja did not know whether to be pleased or angry when later Mwaura came into the room.

  ‘Hey, man. Is it true?’ Mwaura started in a subservient, conspiring whisper which said: you know all the secrets of the powers that rule above us. Throw me a few crumbs of your mighty knowledge.

  ‘What?’ Karanja asked, slow to respond to the affected adoration.

  ‘Well, that the boss, you know, Ka-Thompson, has gone?’ Whenever Mwaura wanted to conspire against any man in authority, he always put the diminutive ‘Ka’ before his name.

  ‘Who told you?’ Karanja was startled, but tried to appear cool.

  ‘Oh, just rumours. And I said to myself, the only person who would know is Karanja. He is in these people’s secrets. Especially the boss. That man loved you, you know – always sent for you – oh, yes, and I could see he feared you. Is it true?’

  Karanja knew he was being flattered, it made him feel good.

  ‘You people and your rumours. Didn’t you see him at work yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, but…. Couldn’t that have been the last day? That’s why he called for you, is that not so? To say good-bye. Did he give you some money? And people say –
well, do you know I often agree with you when you say that people’s tongues are wild?’

  ‘What do people say?’ Karanja was suspicious and curious.

  ‘That an African, a man with a black skin like you or me, is coming to replace him.’

  ‘No!’ Karanja said firmly, expressing more what he would not want to see happen than what he knew would happen. ‘You may think what you like, but Thompson is not going anywhere. It was only yesterday that I was having a chat with his wife. She gave me coffee.’

  ‘Really! Mm,’ Mwaura said, nodding his head several times. ‘I see, I understand. You know, I would not be surprised to hear that you have tasted that woman. Do you know how my mouth waters when I look at her smooth buttocks and her breasts that cry to you: touch me, touch me. And her voice, it is like a song, makes you think of her thing itself. Lucky man. How did you start her?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Karanja had warmed to the talk, but was uneasy, unable to deny or confirm what Mwaura was suggesting.

  ‘Come, man. You must have tasted her. How do her goods taste?’

  ‘You people. Why do you think Europeans have anything special? They are like everybody else, you or me.’

  ‘A confession! Anyway, I knew you had done it. By the way, what are you doing on Thursday, on Uhuru day?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing …’ he added, the inner warmth melting.

  ‘Nothing? Aren’t you going to this thing?’