Lately David had spent his nights lying in bed thinking about Wanjiru. In his fantasy she would come unexpectedly to his thingira, his bachelor hut, with food and sugarcane beer. They would lie down face to face as custom demanded and caress each other. In his dream they had been doing this already for a period of time so that it was now permissible for him to put his penis between her thighs and there experience relief, provided he did not fully penetrate her. But that was not necessary to his fantasy. David would be satisfied with just orugane wa nyondo, "the warmth of her breast," which was the Kikuyu way of love.
If Wanjiru were like any other Kikuyu girl, he would approach her father, offer a price, and buy her. Then he would bring her back here, build her a hut next to his mother's, and visit her bed whenever he wished. But Wanjiru was not like any other girl. The first problem was with her education. She was the only educated girl David knew, although he was aware there were others in Kenya and that their numbers were growing. Wanjiru was therefore taboo, unfit to be a wife, and buying her would make David an outcast among his friends. The second problem lay with his mother; Wachera did not approve of Wanjiru because she had sat in a schoolroom with boys and wore European dresses and spoke up in the company of men. But David's biggest problem with Wanjiru was quite simply that she didn't know he existed.
His mother came out of her hut now, greeting him and going down to the river with her waterpot. He watched her, his heart filled with pride.
Wachera had withstood the forces of change and "Europeanization," and because she had defied the white man's law against the practice of tribal medicine and lived by herself without a husband, her mystique and revered status had grown over the years so that now she was a living legend among the Kikuyu.
Unbidden, Njeri came to David's mind.
How different his half sister was from the other two women in his life! She wore dresses such as Wanjiru wore, castoffs from Bwana Lordy's wife, but she had none of Wanjiru's fight and spirit. Also seventeen years old, like Wanjiru, Njeri was docile and uncomplaining in the old way, but she hated the old ways and exhibited a demeaning adoration of the wazungu.
Njeri desperately wanted to be white, David knew. She despised her blackness and believed the white man's lies about the inferiority of her own race. She clung to Memsaab Mkubwa as if her life required it, spending all her days in the eucalyptus glade at the memsaab's feet. Everywhere the memsaab went, Njeri followed—ever since the journey to England eight years ago. Thoughts of his sister shamed David. She pierced his heart in a way Wanjiru never could. He had come upon Njeri one day down at the river scraping her body all over with a pumice stone until she bled. She had been trying to scrape off her blackness.
As the morning came to life with birds and monkeys filling the trees with their news, David forced his thoughts away from the three women in his life and reminded himself of the important appointment he must soon keep.
When he had received an unexpected reply to the letter he had written to the Times in England, David had called for a meeting of the Young Kikuyu Alliance, the political organization he and his friends had formed two years ago. The meeting today was to serve two purposes: to circulate the petition he had drawn up demanding that the government provide a university for Africans in Kenya and to show his brothers the letter he had received from Jomo Kenyatta.
That name was becoming famous throughout Kenya, with an aura of power about it. Jomo lived in England as a student, and he regularly wrote articles for the Times, which made its way into the hands of the hot-blooded Kikuyu youth in the Central Province. In his writings for the English people Jomo Kenyatta explained his tribal ways, clarified African mysteries, and strove to speak to the British public on behalf of black independence. In England he was being labeled "agitator." Among the Kenya youth he was becoming a symbol of their fight.
Everyone knew that the man's name had once been Johnstone Kamau, but the reason for the change and what it meant were unknown and much speculated upon. The prevailing theory was that Kenyatta had named himself for the ornamental belt he wore, the kinyata, but David knew the real story. He never forgot the night his mother had taken him into the forest, where a young Johnstone Kamau had addressed a secret group. She had told that young man of her prophecy, that he would one day be "Kenya's lamp," Kenya taa.
Recalling that meeting now, David saw that it paled in comparison with the ones now taking place all over Kenya. Nationalism was emerging; African self-awareness was starting to spread. The sparks that Kenyatta had struck that night of eight years ago had ignited a brush fire that the British were helpless to stamp out. The length and width of the colony, among all the tribes from the Luo people on Lake Victoria to the Swahili on the coast, political consciousness was on the rise.
David had formed the Young Kikuyu Alliance because he and his friends found the Kikuyu Loyal Patriots too moderate and the Kikuyu Central Association admitted only elders. The youth needed an outlet, and they needed a spokesman. David Kabiru was their elected leader for three reasons: He carried the Mathenge name, which spelled power to every Kikuyu; he was an excellent speaker and unafraid to voice his opinions; and above all, he was recognized as being the most intelligent and educated of his peers.
Four years ago he had gone from Grace Treverton's primary school into the Secondary School for Boys in Nyeri, a high school established by the Local Native Council when families, determined to resist the missionary fight against female circumcision and the new rule that said no African who had undergone tribal initiation could attend a mission school, had pulled their children from those schools and had united to build their own. David had left Grace's small school the star pupil. Memsaab Daktari, having seen early the boy's brightness and quickness to learn, had taken it upon herself to give him extra tutoring and gifts of books on special occasions. David had read those books avidly and retained everything.
When he entered the high school, he was already far ahead of the other boys, and so the headmaster had written a special curriculum for David Mathenge, which the boy had followed with stunning success, astounding his white teachers. And when he sat for his final exams, David's results were better than many achieved at the Prince of Wales School, the Europeans' leading school. He now held the O level of the Cambridge School Certificate and had applied to the prestigious Makerere University in Uganda, from which he was now anxiously awaiting word.
In Uganda David was going to study agriculture. His mother had promised him that the Treverton land was going to be his one day, and he wanted to be prepared.
But it was not an easy wait. David was in a hurry to be doing something, to be climbing to higher achievements. When he had left the high school with his precious certificate and a mind that was sharp and full of ideas and thirsty for knowledge, David had found no post waiting for him. The few Africans who held positions in offices or wore the white man's badge had gotten them through "favors" and servility. David Mathenge was simply another educated "boy." Memsaab Grace had gotten him the job that he now worked at for twelve shillings a month, slaving for her brother as a clerk in a wooden shack next to the coffee processing sheds upriver. David sat at a table for twelve hours a day, making marks in a ledger. He recorded coffee production and kept African labor cards. He was allowed no breaks but brought his lunch wrapped in a banana leaf and ate it while he worked; he never handled money, and whenever a white man came into the shed, David had to stand respectfully.
He had not wanted the job, but his mother had encouraged him to take it, reminding him of the Kikuyu proverb that said, "It is the well-fed lion that studies the herd."
David could now hear the grinding of truck motors up on the ridge. The southern acres were being harvested, and the berries were being taken down to the shed, where he was deafened all day long by the roar of processing machinery. Up on that ridge, with bent backs and fingers raw from picking, Kikuyu women and children plucked the red berries from the three-quarter-million trees and filled their sacks.
He lifted his face to the pale blue sky and thought, That is my land...
But David wanted more than land. He wanted his manhood back, and the manhood of his people.
"We are not the white man's equals!" he had cried at the last political rally, his handsome black face, the image of his warrior father's, cast in the glow of torchlight. "In Nairobi we are restricted where we may walk. The white man has the run of the city; we are not allowed to cross River Road. If we pass a white man and do not lift our hat, he has the right to give us his boot in our backside. There are signs on shops and eating places that say, 'No dogs and Africans allowed.' We are not permitted to wear shoes or long trousers but must do with bare feet and shorts like little boys because they tell us we must not aspire to things we cannot afford to buy. The white men take our women as mistresses and prostitutes, but if an African shakes the hand of a white woman, even if in friendship and with her consent, it means a prison term for him! Not even in the afterlife are we equal, for are we not buried in separate graveyards?"
And then, just when the young crowd was at its hottest and David had stirred their blood, he had made his one fatal mistake. "The time has come," he had shouted, "for leadership to be removed from the ineffectual and useless chiefs and handed over to us educated young men!"
That was when Chief John Muchina, the only man in all Kenya whom David feared, had stepped in and broken up the rally.
David hated John Muchina. The man had grown fat on collaboration with the imperialist overlords. He played both sides, placating his simpleminded people with a few roads, a school here and there, pleasing the whites with his bootlicking ways, and in the middle growing rich off both. John Muchina was a Kikuyu elder from the Karatina area; he owned nineteen wives, five hundred head of cattle, a stone house, and a motorcar. He was what the white men called "a good nigger," and as Chief of the Nyeri District, one of the most powerful men in the colony, Muchina had the authority to put David Mathenge in prison—to be at the mercy of interrogation/ torture.
But David was no fool. When he had called for today's meeting of the YKA he had made certain first that Chief John Muchina was going to be down in Nairobi deeply involved with the Chief Native Commissioner.
As he strode across the dusty ground to fetch a gourd of goat's milk from his mother's hut, David was stopped by the sight of two horses that suddenly appeared on Bwana Lordy's polo field. When they galloped nearer, David recognized the riders. And he was surprised. Bwana Geoffrey was no stranger to the Treverton Estate, but Memsaab Mona had been away at school in Nairobi. David had not seen her for three years; he now stared at her, the girl who had dared him to go into the surgery hut.
"GIVE OVER, MONA!" Geoffrey whooped, swinging his polo mallet high in the air. "Make way for a champion!"
She galloped ahead of him and reined in her horse at the last minute, causing his pony to shy. She swung her mallet and sent the ball flying. Mona then raced down the field toward the goalposts at the north end with Geoffrey close behind. They made a lot of noise and kicked up a lot of grass sods in their scramble for the ball. This was the end of the field that abutted Grace Treverton's land. On the other side of the fence lay the new road that ran between the towering gates of the mission. Beyond those gates, the cinderblock buildings with their iron roofs could be seen among trees. Inside one of those stone bungalows, working in two modern operating theaters and tending patients in a hundred beds, Grace's well-trained medical staff could hear the calls of the two on the nearby polo field and the crack of a hit ball.
Now Geoffrey pushed his mount back down the field toward his own goal; Mona flew after him, mallet ready to swing. They laughed breathlessly and shouted good-natured insults, each recognizing the other's ability and skill. Geoffrey Donald, twenty-five years old, had a rating of four and was a Number Three, his team's best player. Mona's position was Number One and rated a minus one, but she was only eighteen and had been playing the game for just a year. She was rapidly making progress and a reputation for herself in female polo and was spending these weeks after graduation in practice for the big tournament that was going to be held during Nairobi Race Week.
They reached the south end of the field, where David Mathenge watched them through the fence. Mona nearly had a clear shot when Geoffrey's horse wheeled about unexpectedly to the left, surprising her Arabian and causing it to rear. Startled, Mona was thrown from her saddle, and she landed on the ground flat on her back.
Geoffrey was immediately at her side. "Mona!" He gathered her into his arms. "Mona?"
Her eyelids fluttered. She had difficulty focusing. Then she drew in a breath and laughed.
"Are you all right?"
"I... think so. Just got the wind knocked out of me. No harm done."
He helped her to her feet. She leaned against him, feeling a bit dizzy. "You're sure?" he said. And when she raised her face to say yes, he kissed her.
It caught her off guard. Mona had never been kissed before, and she had never dreamed Geoffrey Donald would be the first to do it. So she let him. And it was a long one, with his arms going around her and pulling her against him. But when his tongue touched her closed lips, she drew abruptly back. "Geoffrey!" she said with a laugh.
"I'm in love with you, Mona. Marry me."
"Geoff—"
"You know it's what they've been expecting. It's been understood between our two families for years that you and I would get married."
Suddenly annoyed, Mona pulled away from his arms and brushed grass off her riding pants. Yes, she knew about the "understanding" between the two families, and she had never given it the least thought. Mona knew that her parents wouldn't let her marry just "anyone." She was the daughter of a lord; her full title was Lady Mona Treverton. Geoffrey Donald only just qualified because he was very rich and because his father had been knighted for bravery in the war. But what about marrying for love? What about asking Mona what she wanted?
But even if they did ask her, Mona would not know what to say.
For six years she had been attending a girls' boarding school in Nairobi. Whenever she came home for holidays, her only contact with boys was at large gatherings when Bellatu was packed with people. She hadn't had an opportunity to develop a special friendship with a boy or to curry a schoolgirl crush. In those six years she had occasionally encountered Geoffrey Donald, a roughly cut, unpolished hunter/ rancher who worked Kilima Simba when he felt like it, then disappeared for months on safari. Those times they had met he had been politely indifferent to her, having seen no doubt just another awkward girl who was all eyes and knees and who sat with her cake plate on her lap like an unwanted guest. And then, last year, things changed. Geoffrey came to her seventeenth birthday party, given not to please Mona but as another excuse for her parents to have a hundred guests to Bellatu, and he had looked at her as if they had never met. To Mona's surprise, two letters had come to her at the school after that, one from the Sudan, where Geoffrey was doing herd control, the other from Tanganyika, where he was hunting lion on the Serengeti. Finally, when she had come home from school once and for all a few weeks ago, Geoffrey had appeared, looking a little more combed and pressed than usual, and now he was almost a permanent fixture around the estate.
Mona was flattered. She had never received so much attention in her life. Geoffrey was good-looking—not as much so as his father, Sir James, but still terribly attractive. He led a romantic, adventurous life, owned a very prosperous cattle ranch, and was generally admired by everyone. But Mona wasn't in love with him.
"I say," said Geoffrey, "who's that?"
Mona looked through the goalposts at David Mathenge, who stood between the two huts that abutted the polo field fence. "Nobody. Just one of my father's boys."
"I must say, he's a sullen-looking chap. I don't think I care for the way he's watching us."
"Come on, Geoffrey. Let's get back up to the house."
But Geoffrey remained where he was. "I'll bet we shocked him with our kiss! They don't kiss, y
ou know. And they don't know what they're missing!"
Mona felt suddenly uncomfortable. David stood in the smoky light of early morning, his naked chest and long limbs resembling those of the Masai warriors she had seen in Nairobi. Strangely, his khaki shorts struck Mona as a mockery—but to whom, to him or to herself, she didn't know.
"Let's shock him again, shall we?" Geoffrey said.
Mona said, "No," too quickly. Then: "Yes," and she impulsively put her arms around Geoffrey's neck.
They don't know what they're missing, Geoffrey had said. Unexpectedly Mona remembered an afternoon of a few weeks ago in her aunt's cottage. Grace had befriended two penniless archaeologists, and she was trying to raise money to fund their digs in Kenya, so she had put on an Indian bun-and-treacle tea for the Leakeys, and during the course of the little party Louis Leakey had spoken knowledgeably and frankly of the Africans.
"It is considered a disgrace," Dr. Leakey had said, "for an African husband not to give his wife complete sexual satisfaction. Prior to marriage the young man is instructed in exactly what to do and what not to do, while his bride is taught by her mother all the best positions and whatever is necessary for an exciting and gratifying sex life."
I doubt David Mathenge is shocked by our kiss, Mona thought. And then added on a deeper, more secret level of her mind: Our cool, unexciting kiss.
Geoffrey drew back but continued to hold her by the arms, close to him. He looked into her eyes and said, "You will marry me, won't you, Mona?"
She felt her annoyance rise again. Was this his idea of romance? The rather accidental meeting of lips on a polo field? Then she thought: But what do I want anyway? Mona had never experienced sexual excitement, had never mooned over a film star the way the girls at school had, never reveled in delicious fantasies or felt the electricity of "his touch." All Mona ever felt inside was a sort of detachment, perhaps even a bit of impatience with the whole thing, and it was starting to worry her.
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