by Frank Coates
‘I’m a member of the Legislative Council,’ he said, producing his papers with the Governor’s signature and seal.
She examined his letter at some length. ‘So you are,’ she said, giving him an appraising look. ‘I imagine you’ll be wanting a room, then.’
‘Thank you. With a bath if possible.’
‘This is the Settler’s Retreat,’ she said with a wry smile, ‘not the Norfolk. But you’re in room number six.’ She handed him the key. ‘There’s a bathroom down the hall and a wash basin in your room.’
He thanked her and carried his bag to his room.
After bathing, he took a fresh white shirt from his bag, and retied his tie. He was tempted to remain in shirt sleeves, but decorum, and the slightly crumpled appearance of his shirt, swayed him. He donned his double-breasted jacket, and headed towards the dining room.
The manageress was standing behind the small bar in the corner of the dining room.
‘Would you care for a pre-dinner drink?’ she asked.
Sam raised his eyebrows. Africans were forbidden to buy alcohol, although there wasn’t an Indian dukawallah that didn’t flaunt the law, and illegal distilleries existed in almost every village.
‘I recognise you,’ she said. ‘Remembered your name too when I saw it on your papers.’
She was smiling at him, amused by his baffled expression.
‘I’m Georgina. Dana’s friend.’
She had appeared vaguely familiar when they’d met earlier, but he’d often had trouble remembering white peoples’ faces — they all looked the same.
‘Oh, of course. Georgina.’ He extended his hand this time. ‘Nice to see you again.’
She nodded, still smiling.
‘Gin and tonic?’
‘Thank you.’
She poured him his gin, and herself a double. They spent a few minutes trying to recall when and where they’d met.
‘I know,’ she said at last. ‘It was at the races. You were with Dana.’
He could recall her now. She was seldom with her husband, and usually had a drink in her hand. The years had not been kind to her. He remembered her as a pert and attractive young woman. She was now carrying at least an extra forty pounds. Under heavy make-up, her furrowed face showed the ravages of the years, and her eyes were already bleary with drink.
They chatted about Dana’s horses and the day Dancer won the Nairobi St Leger. He couldn’t ask the questions that had been on his mind throughout their conversation, but Georgina volunteered the answers and the information stunned him.
‘I haven’t seen nor heard anything about her for so long. Of course, I heard she’d divorced Edward and remarried a few years after she left us.’
Remarried. Dana had given him the impression she would never leave Edward, not for anything or anyone.
She took a mouthful of drink and studied him over the rim of her glass.
‘But you probably knew all about that,’ she said.
Sam knew she was testing his reaction and tried to keep a neutral expression. ‘Can’t say that I did,’ he said, and waited for her to continue.
‘Yes. She kept it quiet, but her sister, Averil, went back a few years ago, and we got all the news.’
Georgina continued to talk, but Sam paid little attention. In the dozen or so years since Dana left him, he’d had plenty of women. He stayed with none of them for more than a week. No one could be compared to Dana, and none commanded the powerful emotions she was able to raise in him.
Something in Georgina’s rambling monologue grabbed his attention.
‘What was that?’
‘I said, Averil had never seen her sister’s baby.’
‘Dana had a baby?’
‘Yes. Must have been … oh, 1931 or early 1932. Shortly after she left Nairobi.’
He remembered the passion of their last meeting in his flat at Muthaiga.
Again, Georgina was studying him, and Sam held his breath.
‘A gorgeous little girl,’ she said. ‘Spitting image. Fair hair. Green eyes.’
Sam had an early breakfast in the dining room. He was served by a middle-aged Embu woman who gave his white shirt and tie sideways glances, but said little more than was necessary. When he passed the desk to return his key, Georgina was there, looking owl-eyed in the morning light.
‘You’re off then,’ she said cheerily.
‘Thank you for your hospitality.’
‘My pleasure. Any time.’
He nodded. A thought crossed his mind to enquire about Averil, and maybe obtain her address, but he let it go. No use disturbing old memories unnecessarily.
‘Goodbye,’ he said, and headed for the door.
‘Oh, Sam,’ she said from behind him at the desk.
Sam turned.
She eyed him up and down.
‘I mean it. Come back any time.’
‘Thanks, Georgina. I will.’
There was a warm breeze stirring the dust on the ride to Embu. By the time he tied the horse to the pole outside the District Commissioner’s office, he was hot, thirsty, and dusty. He pushed through the door marked His Majesty’s Government. Mr William Hudson, District Commissioner, Embu District.
The DC’s secretary appeared surprised when Sam introduced himself as a member of the Legislative Council, but went into the inner office, returning moments later to say that the DC was busy and that Sam should wait.
After an hour, during which time five people were shown in to the see the District Commissioner ahead of him, Sam was becoming increasingly annoyed. From experience he knew he must be patient, reminding himself he was there to represent the people of Kobogi: it would do no good to allow his personal feelings to intervene.
When another half-hour had passed, the DC came out and appeared surprised to find Sam in his outer office.
‘Good morning, Mr Hudson,’ Sam said, rising to his feet as he spoke.
‘Oh, you’re … you’re …?’
‘Wangira. Sam Wangira.’
‘Yes, look, Mr Wangira, I’m a bit busy right now. Would you mind making an appointment with Collins here, and I’ll speak to you some other time.’
Sam’s jaw tightened. ‘Actually, I’ve been waiting for the best part of two hours, sir. And I’m returning to Nairobi this afternoon.’
Hudson frowned.
‘It shouldn’t take too much of your time,’ Sam added.
‘Very well,’ the DC said, doing nothing to conceal his annoyance. Turning to his secretary, he said, ‘Ring the club will you, Collins? Tell them I’ll be a few minutes late for lunch.’ He turned on his heel and re-entered his office.
Sam followed. Hudson sat behind his desk, which was festooned with papers.
‘Now, what can I do for you, Mr Wangira?’
‘I was out at Kobogi yesterday. That area’s been very badly hit by the drought. There’s no food in the gardens, and it could be weeks before the rains come. They’re surviving on roots and berries.’
‘I know all that. Their leaders are in here every other month. But what do you want me to do about it?’
‘Many of the settlers on the eastern slopes got the first of the rains and have been able to reap an early harvest. A lot of their maize is sitting in the government granary down near the Siakago road. I saw it on my way in this morning. Why can’t you send a load out to Kobogi? The village can repay you when they harvest their crop.’
‘Send them a load on credit? What do you think I’m running here, a bloody produce co-op?’
‘It’s just a book entry, for God’s sake, Hudson. You could even charge them interest if you’re that way inclined, but if you don’t do something, some of the old people out there aren’t going to see another harvest. If it’s a matter of money, I’ll pay for it myself.’
Hudson’s face coloured. ‘Listen to me, Wangira,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Just because you can make a knot in a necktie doesn’t qualify you to sit here in judgement. I’ve been in the service of His Majest
y’s government for thirty years, and I’ll be damned if I’ll take cheek from a jumped-up nigger. If you want to spend some of your money you don’t have to waste my time. Take off your fancy Savile Row suit coat, get your black arse down to the store, and load the fucking maize yourself.’
CHAPTER 33
All of Jelani’s family were traditional Kikuyus — the aregi. When the African Inland Mission and their converts — the kirore — attempted to interfere with, and in some cases ban, traditional Kikuyu customs, it created a great schism in the village, leading to trenchant animosity between the two sides. But this didn’t keep Beth Wambui — a kirore — and Jelani Karura — an aregi — from falling in love.
The teachers from the African Inland Mission would have disapproved of the relationship had they known, but Jelani and Beth kept it a secret. Beth’s family knew, and thoroughly disapproved of the match.
To call their love a relationship was probably overstating the matter. They were unable to spend much time together and, to Jelani’s dismay, Beth was determined to stay a virgin.
‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ she said. She paused and her tongue lightly touched her top lip. It was a habit she had whenever dealing with a difficult thought. ‘And I don’t believe we should do anything. That is, anything more than we’ve already been doing.’
‘But why?’ he pleaded.
‘It’s the right thing to do,’ she said. ‘We must keep ourselves pure until we can be properly married in the Christian church.’
Jelani had previously experimented with sex, so his purity was already compromised, but he didn’t have it in his heart to tell Beth. He rationalised his omission because at that time he had followed traditional beliefs regarding sex and felt no shame or obligation to adhere to the Christians’ rules about love games among the young. At the time, such games were considered by his family and the community to be normal behaviour provided there was no risk of pregnancy. And every aregi girl knew where to stop to avoid that situation.
Jelani had no doubt that he was in love. Every time he saw Beth he felt his heart jump and then beat like the wings of a sunbird. When he touched her, even those careful touches that Beth permitted, Jelani’s blood raced and he wanted her more than anything he’d wanted in his life. If it was necessary to become a Christian to have his Beth, Jelani decided he would do so. The challenge of telling his parents and, even more difficult, his grandfather, could wait for another day. The details would be arranged. Everything that could be done would be done when the time came. And for Jelani, whether for love or for lust, the time couldn’t come soon enough.
Jelani sometimes wished he wasn’t an aregi. It placed him at odds with Beth’s family. It also placed him among the minority of Kikuyu. All his life he’d felt out of place. Being aregi didn’t help.
As a child he’d been taunted about his light skin. The older boys called him dukawallah, saying his skin was more the colour of the Indian man who owned the store on the Nairobi road than of a real Kikuyu.
They also ridiculed him because of his eyes, which were brown with flecks of green. His mother called them lion’s eyes, but the older boys said they were like those of the wildebeest — the buffoon of the grasslands.
When he was much younger, it was such taunts that led him to ask his mother why he was so light while she and his father had normal skin. She evaded the question.
One day he overheard a group of elders discussing the Ugandan woman who had brought Mama Karura’s child to the village. They called that child Zesiro, but Jelani knew he was his mother’s only child, and ran home fighting back the tears welling in his eyes.
In a breathless torrent he told his mother what he’d heard. She calmed him and admitted he was not a child born of her body, but the child given to her by a Ugandan woman, a distant in-law of a man in the village. The woman had come to Kobogi because she knew there was a woman here who could have no children of her own and who desperately wanted one. It was, she said, how she and his father had come to have Jelani, or Zesiro, as he was then called, for their son — a child chosen ahead of all the other children in the world without parents.
‘What does this Zesiro name mean?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t know, and because of that your father and I decided to name you Jelani instead.’
He felt as though he was not one, but two boys; two boys with different names. Two boys from two different worlds. It made him feel even more unusual than before; and he turned his attention to the second troubling matter.
‘Then is the one who brought me here my mother?’ he asked.
His mother said she thought not, because she could see no resemblance, but the woman couldn’t say who his real mother was because she was sworn to secrecy.
‘And who is my father?’
Again she said she didn’t know. ‘But I think, maybe he was a white man in an important position,’ she said. ‘Maybe he loved your mother but couldn’t keep you because he was ashamed that people would not respect him because he fell in love with a black woman.’
Jelani became very anxious at this. He already felt different, and for his whole young life his difference had caused him trouble. It was bad enough that he was the child of another woman — a stranger. But to be the child of a white man would make the taunts much worse. He told his mother he would not be the son of a stranger and a white man.
His mother hushed him and said it didn’t matter who his parents were: she and his father were his family now, and they loved him.
But Jelani would not be comforted by such a story.
‘Wait,’ his mother said. ‘The one who brought you to us left me a gift from your mother.’
She went to an old woven basket that hung above her bed; she used it to hold the few personal items she possessed. From it she took a leather thong attached to a large tooth.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Your father thinks it’s a broken lion’s tooth.’
Jelani turned it over in his hands. The thong threaded through a silver clasp fitted to the fang. It was the type of ornament he’d seen the warriors wearing. He asked her if he might wear it.
‘It is why I have kept it all these years,’ she said. ‘Keep it.’
He felt better now that he had the pendant as a gift. Even so, he pleaded with her not to tell anyone. Finally, she and his father agreed to keep their idea of his true parents a secret.
This didn’t stop the boys in the village from teasing him. He’d dash at those who called him a half-caste, throwing his arms about in rage. Consequently, he received many beatings, but eventually he became big enough and skilled enough to put down anyone who dared to accuse him of being partly white.
He knew he should confide his story to Beth, and had on a number of occasions started to tell her, but lost his nerve.
One day, soon, he must do it.
Three large fires sent shadows snaking over the packed earth, climbing the mud-daubed walls and lighting the thatch-roofed huts encircling the centre of the village.
The elders sat in dignified silence around the fire; behind them were the old women — their shaved heads gleaming with fat and red ochre.
There was a mood of subdued expectancy among them. The gathering was part of the celebrations for the newly initiated warriors, but they knew that many in the village did not condone what the leader of the African Inland Mission outpost of Embu, the Reverend Fenton Farley, would describe as an unholy gathering. It was because of the rift between the kirores and the aregi that the elders among the aregi felt the need for circumspection that night.
The cautious mood didn’t extend to the nditos — the young unmarried and uncircumcised girls — who congregated in small groups in preparation for the start of the dancing. They wore short leather aprons and hid their giggles behind their hands. Their firm pointed breasts showed through garlands of their finest beads.
Jelani spotted Beth among the nditos and his heart thumped in his chest. He had pleaded
with her to join the young women for the dance, but she was afraid of her parents.
‘It is forbidden,’ she’d whispered to him as they discussed it. ‘Reverend Farley says the ngoma is a dance with the devil.’
But she was there, and it made him so pleased he wanted to catch her eye and let her know how much he loved her for it, but it was expected that a warrior should remain aloof so, with a great effort, he restrained himself.
Beyond the throw of the firelight were the warriors. They gathered in the darkness, naked except for brief loincloths, elaborate headdresses of ostrich plumes, and leggings of black and white colobus monkey fur.
His age-mates had given Jelani the honour of being the leader of the first group of dancers because he had so bravely and eloquently argued the case for their initiation with the Kikuyu man from the Legislative Council.
He now boldly led them from the darkness into the circle of light around the fires.
The choir sat in their own cluster and, immediately the warriors appeared, began to sing.
The kehembe players beat a furious pace on the leather-covered drums. Large and small rattles added to the drums and kept the singers, who were gathered close to the musicians, in time.
The warriors strutted and gyrated, leaped about and waved their feather-tipped staves in the air.
Jelani’s group was joined by others and they formed three circles around each fire, chanting and grunting. They made fearful cries and struck the ground forcefully with their long decorated staves. Rattles tied below their knees added emphasis to their movements as they stamped their feet and circled the fires. During the circling, and responding to a hidden signal, a dancer would break from the formation and, with a wild shriek, leap over the flames.
Among the dancers, and the most awesome of them, were those with white-ochre coating their bodies. They looked like the ghosts of warriors who had long ago passed into the afterlife. They received the most enthusiastic cries of ohh and ahh as they joined the others.
When the nditos came from their concealment to join the warriors, the music and singing reached a new height. Soon the encircled warriors broke formation and mixed with the colourful nditos.
