Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  She had begun feeding the villagers a month ago when the last of their own grain had run out and their vegetable plots failed. They were now starving because the Kikuyu did not believe in preparing for the future. They grew only enough to eat and to use as barter, believing that tomorrow would somehow take care of itself. For that same reason it would never have occurred to them to dam the river, as Valentine had done, to ensure a water supply in times of drought, and even now, with the reservoir available, they did not try to think of an efficient means of delivering that water to their dying shambas. Every morning the Kikuyu women and little girls trudged to the man-made pond, filled their calabashes, and carried the water back up to the village, their bodies bent double. To dig a furrow to eliminate this daily toil would have meant change, and change was taboo.

  Grace and the boy left the veranda and struck off down the path that led away from Grace's house. To their right lay the trickling river; to their left rose the grassy overlook, which was now totally depleted of forest. From this path, looking up, Grace could just see the roof of Bella Two.

  It had been eight months since Grace and Rose's arrival in Africa, and Valentine was obsessed with having the house done by Christmas. He drove his Africans day and night, striding about the construction area with his whip, shouting, giving the boot to anyone he found sitting down. It had become the focus of his entire life: to have Bella Two finished in time for the gala celebration that was going to mark the official opening of the house. And it was expected to be quite the event. They all were to continue to live in the camp right up until the big night, when more than two hundred guests would arrive from all over the protectorate and sit down to a fabulous feast. There would be music and dancing, and afterward, when the guests all were comfortably housed in makeshift huts and tents around the grounds, Valentine would escort his wife for the first time upstairs to their new bedroom.

  Abutting the southern boundary of Grace's thirty acres was the clearing where Mathenge and his family had lived and which Valentine was now converting into a polo field. The chief had ordered his wives back across the river to live with the main clan, but two women had disobeyed: elder Wachera, his wife's revered grandmother, and young Wachera who was apprenticing with the old medicine woman. Of the seven original huts, only two still stood.

  A few weeks ago Grace had observed a strange confrontation between Mathenge and his wife's grandmother. Elder Wachera had politely informed the young chief that someone was tearing down the huts, and he had respectfully explained why, telling her to join the others across the river. The grandmother had quietly, almost shyly reminded him of the holiness of that ground because of the ancient fig tree, and the young warrior, in a diffident manner, had courteously asked her to obey his wishes.

  It had been a bizarre exchange. Clearly two revered ranks were at odds. Elderly Kikuyu were so honored in the tribe that it was taboo to utter their names, especially that of a medicine woman who spoke for the ancestors. But young warriors, particularly one who was now a chief and very nearly had the status of a mzungu, were also to be obeyed. As a result, neither had backed down. Wachera returned to her hut, there to remain forever, she declared, while Mathenge had stood proudly, his face a mask.

  Valentine, however, had vowed that his plans were going forward, and he would have the old woman bodily removed if necessary.

  When Grace and Mario pushed through a stand of whispering bamboo to reach the path to the village across the river, they were halted by the sudden appearance of Mathenge. He did not see them but walked with a purposeful step toward the plantation.

  Grace held her breath. There went her adversary, the man she must win over, who had the power to grant her success or failure in Africa. A man she was afraid of.

  And he was the most beautiful human being she had ever seen.

  Mathenge was very tall with broad, rounded shoulders and a surprisingly narrow waist and hips. He wore a shuka made of americani knotted over one shoulder so that when he walked, his lean flanks and shapely buttocks were exposed. His hair was done in Masai fashion, in two sets of braids, front and back, plastered down with red ocher. Such a hairstyle took hours to arrange and bespoke the man's vanity. His face, too, told of utter conceit. Mathenge's Masai ancestry was evident in the high cheekbones and narrow nose, the boldly swung jaw. His manner was aloof, his expression not so much disdainful as that of a man who doesn't bother himself with life's trivialities.

  Grace watched him pass, his stride fluid, long arms swinging with supple grace; she realized she was holding her breath.

  The Kikuyu did not like straight paths but felt safer meandering. Their minds worked similarly: They never stated a fact directly but hinted at it and skirted around it, leaving one to draw one's own conclusions. In the same way that they feared a blunt statement as if it were a poisoned arrow, so did they avoid a straight road; that was why Grace and Mario now followed a twisting, indirect track to the village.

  It ran parallel with an ancient animal path where the recent spoor of giant forest hogs and elands indicated that animals were venturing down to Valentine's reservoir to drink. Because of the drought, much game was coming boldly out of the forest; now, too, new birds appeared among the reeds and bamboo: crested cranes, storks, and Egyptian geese. Mario declared he had even heard a rhino crashing through the bush during the night.

  As Grace walked among the juniper and mimosa trees, catching sight of a parrot flashing red and yellow overhead, she felt as if she walked over land that had a soul. There was a pulse here that she had never felt in Suffolk. Here the landscape breathed, the earth gave off a living heat, the plants seemed to whisper, to bend toward her. The air was filled with a sense of expectancy, of waiting....

  The village entrance was concealed among trees and vines in order to trick evil spirits and thus to keep them out. Beyond the natural archway lay a clearing with perhaps thirty huts, all round, made of cow dung, and thatched. Blue smoke spiraled up from the pointed roofs to indicate habitation; cook fires must burn day and night, and if a fire went out, it was bad luck and the hut must be destroyed. It was a plain, homely little village because the Kikuyu had no art or architecture, did not carve designs or sculpt. Despite the lack of a harvest and the Spanish flu that had weakened the clan, the village was an anthill of industry. Everyone was working. From the very littlest girls tending goats to the married women pounding meager handfuls of millet to the grandmothers who sat with legs stretched in the sunshine weaving baskets, the scene proved the maxim that one never saw a Kikuyu woman idle.

  In their leather aprons stiff with dirt and grease, arms jangling with beads and copper, they tanned goatskins, stirred their paltry stews, and worked at their primitive pottery, using no wheel and baking the pots in the sunlight. With the exception of a few young women each wearing a woolly patch of hair on her head to indicate she was unmarried, all the heads were smooth-shaven and gleamed like brown billiard balls.

  There were no men in the village. Either they were working for Valentine on the opposite ridge or they were enjoying a beer drink under the shade of a tree. As Sir James had once said to Grace, "The women are the toilers; the men, the loiterers."

  When some children saw Grace, they dropped what they were doing and came hesitantly toward her. It was supposed to be a mark of status to have flies about oneself because that indicated the ownership of goats. The more flies meant the more goats and therefore more wealth and status in the tribe, and to brush the flies away was a terrible breach of etiquette. But Grace didn't care about etiquette when these little ones came forward and she saw their faces plastered black with flies. She shooed the flies away with her hand.

  Protocol had to be followed before the food could be distributed. All the women smiled shyly at Grace and waited while elder Wachera came forward. Her venerable old body was nearly hidden beneath ropes of cowry shells and bands of beads. She walked with dignity and smiled, revealing gaps where her incisors had been extracted in girlhood as a sign of beauty. S
he extended a calabash to Grace. It contained a greenish mixture of sour milk and spinach, which Grace drank, knowing how little the family could spare it but knowing also that to refuse would give offense. Wachera said, "Mwaiga, "a long, drawn-out Kikuyu word that means "All is well, come or go in peace," the hail and farewell of all Kikuyu conversation. The medicine woman spoke demurely but with stateliness, being the senior and most honored woman in the village. She did not look directly at Grace because that would have been impolite.

  The dialogue then twisted and turned like the village path, hinting at the drought, suggesting the famine, with Grace struggling through and occasionally helped by Mario. She could not go directly to the point of the food she had brought as that would have been bad manners. Grace tried to curb her impatience. The children were starving. Their little arms and legs like sticks and their blown-up bellies were inclined in the direction of the cooking pot like blossoms following the sun.

  Finally Wachera insinuated that the lid might be lifted and that if some of the stew left the pot, she would not mind. Even then the children did not rush forward. Mothers came up, giggling behind their hands because they were unused to the presence of a white person, and made sure the handout was polite and orderly. None of the adults helped herself until the children were fed. Then Grace told Mario to hand the sack of grain to Wachera. As she received the sixty-pound bag and swung it easily onto her back, the old Kikuyu woman flashed Mario a look of disdain for having carried the sack into the village himself.

  Grace was now officially welcome in the village and was free to move about. She went first to the huts of women she had been seeing as patients. There was little she could do for them; they were down with the Spanish flu, for which there was no cure. All she could do was talk to them, check their vital signs, and make sure they were being cared for. The huts were smoky and dark, the stuffy air stung with the smell of goat urine because the goats were always brought into the huts at night, and the flies were overwhelming. Grace knelt by each woman, carried out what examination she could, and murmured words of encouragement. Her eyes watered in the foul air and from the frustration of helplessness. If only these women would come to her clinic! She would put them into clean beds, sponge down their fevers, and see that they ate nourishing food.

  One woman lay outside her hut; it meant she was close to death.

  Grace knelt by her and felt the dry forehead. Release was only an hour or two away. How had they known, these women of the village? The Kikuyu possessed an uncanny prescience about death. They always seemed to know when it was going to come and were able to move the dying person outside. It was taboo to have someone die in a hut; it was also thahu for anyone to touch a corpse, and so the dying were moved while still alive. Once outside, they were left alone, waiting for the hyenas to come and finish them because the Kikuyu did not bury their dead.

  Grace knew better than to try to help the woman. Once before she had tried to interfere and had caused such an outcry among the clan that she had been barred from the village for days. "Let us at least move her into the shade," she said. But Mario was held back by tribal taboo.

  "Mario!" she whispered. "Take her legs; I shall take her arms. We'll lay her under that tree."

  He did not move.

  "Damn it, Mario. Remember the Lord Jesus and the story of the good Samaritan."

  His black face worked in indecision. Finally, reminding himself that these were lowly Kikuyu, having not yet become Christians and therefore to be scorned, he made a show of his fearlessness of them, of the old medicine woman in particular, by picking up the woman all by himself and carrying her to the shade.

  In front of another hut Grace found a young mother sucking on the top of her baby's head. Because the infant was not getting enough fluids, its brain had shrunk, and so the "soft spot," the fontanel, had fallen in. The young mother knew enough to recognize this as a bad sign, but her efforts to correct it were all wrong.

  "Tell her the baby needs water," Grace said to Mario. "Tell her to give the baby more milk, more fluids."

  He translated, and the young wife smiled and nodded as if she understood, then returned her mouth to the infant's head.

  Grace straightened and looked around the village. Her cook pot was empty; everyone was back to work. The grain she had brought was being fed to the goats. In these animals the Kikuyu measured wealth and privilege. A woman with thirty goats could sneer upon a woman with only five. Elder Wachera, it was rumored, owned more than two hundred goats, which practically conferred a queenly status upon her. But the grain had been brought for the people, not for the goats!

  "Like an Englishman," Grace murmured, "who will save his gold before his own life."

  "Memsaab?"

  "Let's see Gachiku now. She must be near her time."

  But before Grace could move to the next hut, a voice called out her name.

  She turned around. It was Sir James.

  10

  J

  AMES DONALD HAD TO REMOVE HIS DOUBLE TERAI HAT AND STOOP to clear the arbor that formed the entrance to the village. "Hello," he called to Grace, and waved a fistful of envelopes.

  Her heart leaped. The dream came back. The camp beneath the stars, his hard body against hers, his mouth

  "Post is in," he said with a grin. "Thought I'd bring you yours."

  He was dressed in khaki drill shorts, sturdy boots with socks up to his knees, and a bush shirt that was partially open to reveal the sunburned V on his chest. "I knew where to find you, of course," he said.

  Grace felt her cheeks flush and hoped they were shaded by the brim of her wide pith helmet so that he didn't see. Behind him came Lucille, wearing a dusty slouch hat with a zebraskin band and a canvas bag over one shoulder. Grace thought, but was not sure, that Lucille was frowning. A grimace of displeasure? Or possibly disapproval? But then Lucille's features softened into a smile, and she said, "Hello, Grace. I've brought something for you."

  As he handed Grace her mail, James watched. It was always the same: the hurried sorting through the envelopes, hands snapping eagerly, her eyes full of hope, and then the look of disappointment, the mail clasped, forgotten, in her fingers. It was as if, he thought, she was looking for something. A letter perhaps. From whom?

  "How is it going, Grace?" he asked quietly.

  She looked around the village. All work had ceased; the women were staring. It was because a man had entered their midst. "I don't know what to do, James," she said. "I don't feel as though I'm getting anywhere with them. They let me come and examine them if I bring food, but they won't take any of my medicine or let me treat them. Their idea of a cure is the horrid poisons Wachera boils up."

  James squinted across the compound at the formidable old woman, who was regarding him with a closed expression. "She's a powerful old thing," he said. "You'll never win her over. Mathenge's the one you should convince."

  Grace didn't tell James she was praying she would never have to meet the young chief face-to-face. Instead, she said, "Missions are guaranteed a sum of three hundred pounds a year from the government if they promise to work with the natives. So far the District Medical Officer has determined that I don't deserve it because my clinic stands empty. He accompanied me to this village once; but there was some sort of ceremony going on, and they wouldn't let me in. He wasn't impressed. He said I shall have to demonstrate more involvement than that to receive the three hundred pounds. And, James, I need that money!"

  Grace was worried. Her inheritance was dwindling. Soon she would be relying solely on funds from the Mission Society back in Suffolk.

  "I wish I could help," James said. "As it is, we're getting by on bank overdraft, like everyone else!"

  She smiled. "I shall work it out. Now then, did you come eight miles just to deliver my mail?"

  "I returned your microscope. It's back at your house."

  "Was it a help?"

  His face darkened, and it made him more handsome than ever. "In a way, yes. It confirmed my worst f
ears. We've got east coast fever. I've isolated the sick ones and am dipping the rest of the herd. On top of that, another bloody borehole has gone dry." He looked up at the sky. "If we don't get rain this time 'round, we all might as well cash it in."

  They listened for a moment to the tinkling of goats' bells. Then Lucille said, "I've brought you a present, Grace."

  "Oh, you shouldn't have," Grace said, but her voice died when the book was placed in her hands.

  "It's a Kikuyu translation of the Bible. Isn't that clever?"

  Grace stared down at the black leather cover, the gold-stamped title. "Thank you," she said uncertainly. "But I don't know that it will help me much."

  "Preach the Word of the Lord, Grace. That's how you'll win these people."

  "Mathenge doesn't want anything to do with Christianity. He won't allow preachers in the village."

  Suddenly the morning peace was shattered by a scream. Grace spun around. It had come from Gachiku's hut. She ran, followed by James and Lucille, but Mario hung back because that was a birthing hut and taboo to men.

  Grace went in to the young woman's side and, once her eyes were adjusted to the hut's darkness, saw the large abdomen ripple with contractions. "It's all right," Grace said soothingly in Kikuyu. "Your baby is coming."

  She stepped out of the hut and asked for the muciarithia, the midwife, who in this instance was old Wachera. But the medicine woman did not move.

  "Gachiku is about to give birth," Grace called out. "She needs your help. Mario, explain to her."

  But before he could speak, Wachera held up a silencing hand. Her contempt for this young man who was no warrior and who had forsaken the Lord of Brightness for the Christian God forbade her to exchange words with him. To Sir James, who she knew spoke her tongue and whom she respected, Wachera said, "There is trouble with Gachiku's child. It will not come out. For three days she has been in labor, but the baby does not come. It is thahu. The ancestors have decreed that the child must not be born."