Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  Wanjiru was more resentful of David's selfishness than was Mama Wachera, who was too forgiving of her irresponsible son. Wachera claimed that there was still plenty of time yet for David to buy more wives and that he was too busy now with running the Treverton Estate to see to his duty to more than one woman. As it was, the old woman declared, Wanjiru didn't see her husband as much as she would like. How much worse, then, if she had to share him? Wanjiru disagreed. Even just one more co-wife would ease the work on the shamba and give David's mother and her daughter-in-law time to rest in the sun.

  Another pain came on, and Wanjiru placed both hands on her abdomen. She must not lose this child.

  In her seven years of being David's wife, Wanjiru Mathenge had had six pregnancies. Of those, one had resulted in miscarriage, one in stillbirth, and three had not lived beyond infancy. Only the last, Hannah, a robust little girl who was back at the shamba with her grandmother, had survived. Wanjiru was desperate for another healthy child. And she prayed that this one would be a boy so that the spirit of her father could live again.

  On the matter of the child's name David and Wanjiru had argued. She wanted to call him, if a boy, Kamau, after her father, as Kikuyu law dictated. But David wanted his children to have mzungu names because, he had said, "We will one day be a free and independent modern nation. We must fall in step with the rest of the world." Sarah, if a girl, he had said, and Christopher if a boy. As headstrong as she was, Wanjiru was nonetheless subservient to her husband and had to obey him. In her heart, however, the boy would be Christopher Kamau Mathenge.

  When another sharp and painful contraction came on, Wanjiru looked at the sky to read the hour of the day. Sometime back the European authorities had imposed a curfew on the Nyeri District. It was because of "certain illegal activities," they had said. There were "gangsters" working in the area, and proscribed meetings were taking place at night. They were referring, Wanjiru knew, to an elusive, nebulous organization that, for reasons no one seemed to know, called itself Mau Mau. Its members hid in the forest, struck suddenly and unexpectedly at random white farms, then disappeared into the mists of Mount Kenya. It was a radical fringe element, the authorities declared, small in number and without leadership—not to be bothered about at all, really, except that a few white settlers had complained of cattle being stolen. And so the curfew had been established. Between sunset and sunrise no African could be out of his or her hut.

  Wanjiru saw by the descending sun, a watery circle in the rain-clouded sky, that she had time yet before she must head back to the shamba. She looked for a place to sit, to ease the burden of her body, and to discern if the pains were possibly a false alarm.

  She had had premature pains like these with Hannah, a month before she was due. Wanjiru had merely rested for a few days, the pains had subsided, and Hannah had stayed within her mother until the Lord of Brightness had called her forth. So it would be with this one, Wanjiru consoled herself as she settled down upon a log.

  However, as she sat and waited for relief, as the air grew damp and cool and the sky grew grayer and darker, Wanjiru began to realize in alarm that not only were the contractions not subsiding, but they were coming closer together and intensifying.

  Deciding that she had better start back, Wanjiru stood and turned in the direction of the river.

  She froze.

  Moving through the trees was a large, dark shape. It was accompanied by sounds familiar and frightening to her: rumbles and grunts, the noise of bark being stripped from trees.

  An elephant!

  She watched and listened. How many were there? Was it a lone rogue, or was it a herd? Were they females with babies, or were they young bachelors? Suddenly scared, Wanjiru saw the tops of trees sway and shiver as the giant beast grazed its way through the forest. It was their habit, Wanjiru knew, to migrate down from the bamboo forests at the beginning of the rains, to feed in the less dense woods and where the ridges were not so steep. But she had never seen elephants this far down the mountain before.

  Wanjiru tried to sense the direction of the wind. If there were babies in the herd, or if it was an angry old bull, then her scent would cause alarm and trigger a charge.

  Wanjiru looked right and left. She heard the slow, heavy tread of feet on each side of her, the "belly rumble" that was elephant talk, the snap of twigs and bark. They were on three sides of her—a large herd!

  Wanjiru looked over her shoulder at the thickening forest and the beginning of the mountain slope. The trees behind her did not move; there were no sounds among them. She decided she would make her way slowly backward, away from the herd and then circle them, toward home.

  She went a short distance into the woods and was stopped by a severe contraction. Wanjiru bent over and clutched herself, stifling a groan. She looked back; the elephants were drawing nearer; she saw the flash of white tusk between trees.

  Her fear mounting, Wanjiru hastened her retreat up into the denser forest, moving as quickly and silently as her bulk would allow, pausing only when pain gripped her, and glancing back frequently to measure the distance between herself and the elephants.

  If the matriarch of the herd caught a whiff of human scent...

  Wanjiru moved as swiftly as she could through the descending gloom. Although daylight was now rapidly dying, she dared not try to circle back toward home, not until she was certain she was giving the elephants a wide margin.

  A ropy vine lay across her path; her foot caught on it, and she fell. She cried out.

  Wanjiru lay where she was and strained to listen. The low growl of the elephants, as they communicated with one another in the forest, was all around her. She lay perfectly still in the lowering darkness on the hard, damp ground.

  The herd was moving, she thought in rising panic, at the pace of a snail. They just seemed to stand in a spot and strip the trees, their ears making swishing sounds, their massive feet crushing everything underfoot. The forest grew dark; sounds changed from daylight melodies to sinister, nocturnal calls. Wanjiru was terrified of the night, and now she was about to be caught in it.

  Only one thing worse could happen to her, she decided as she waited in agony for the elephants to move on, and that would be for the rain to break.

  And it did, just as she was picking herself up to head back home.

  The rain was just a gentle drizzle, but Wanjiru could see only a few feet in front of her—the dreary shapes of trees and giant bush. She stumbled for cover under a chestnut tree and was struck by a violent contraction. She cried out again and fell to her knees.

  It lasted longer than the previous pains, and she felt the ominous shifting of her pelvic bones.

  The baby was coming.

  No! she thought in panic. Not here, where the wild beasts of the forest will steal him from me!

  Wanjiru struggled to get to her feet. She pulled herself up along the tree trunk, scraping her palms until they bled, and then, once she was standing, tried to conquer the pain so that she could walk.

  Forgetting the elephants, the lantana leaves in her abandoned basket, and the white man's curfew, Wanjiru managed to push away from the tree and take a few halting steps out in the light rain. She was able to walk. She clutched her abdomen and moved blindly into the drizzle, unaware, in her physical agony and in the confusion of the rain, that she was heading in the wrong direction.

  WANJIRU HAD NO idea how long she had been walking. Night seemed to have come to the forest long ago; the rain had been falling steadily for hours. Her kanga, a piece of brightly colored cloth which she wore around her head in a turban, was soaked and plastered to her shaved scalp. Her skirt clung to her legs, making walking nearly impossible. But she pressed on through the rain and the darkness, scrambling over boulders and fallen logs, feeling her way among trees that were growing closer and closer together, trying desperately to find the direction home.

  She knew where she was. Wanjiru was stumbling up the slope of the mountains the white man called the Aberdares. To them the
range was a national park, but to Wanjiru it was Nyandarua, "Drying Hide," the forest of her ancestors. She also knew that helpless, alone, and about to give birth, she was now in the territory of the deadly buffalo and black leopard.

  Once the pain was so severe that she collapsed and lay for a long time in the mud, the freezing rain washing over her, rocks and dead branches cutting into her.

  Wanjiru's hands and feet were numb; she felt none of the lacerations or the warm blood seeping from her wounds. She was barely even aware of the wet, the sharp cold, her hunger pangs. Wanjiru was centered in her belly, where her child was demanding to be released. But she held him in her; she carried her pain and torture inside her body, through the black forest and into the terrifying night.

  Dear God, she prayed in desperation as she stumbled, fell, then pulled herself up from the mud and plunged into the arctic void. Lord of Brightness, help me!

  She pressed on. Sobs wracked her body as wet branches slapped her face and stung her arms. Her bare feet slipped over the muddy forest floor. The rain continued to come down, heavy and hard, seeming to invade even her skin and soak her to the bones. Wanjiru thought of her warm, dry hut, the bed of goatskins, the ugali stew bubbling on the cook fire, and the comforting presence of David's mother, patiently brewing medicinal tea. But the last thing this nightmarish forest contained, Wanjiru knew in despair, was warmth and dryness.

  Thunder clapped, and the ground shook. Wanjiru heard the trumpeting of startled elephants. She wondered where they were, if it was the same herd, if she was heading away from them or toward them. An icy wind cut through her sodden clothing, making the labor pains sharper.

  She plunged on, into the night.

  THE RAIN FINALLY stopped, and eerie mists swirled up from the ground. Wanjiru had to push through branches laden with water, the cold wind blowing over her wet body. She felt as if the world were turning to ice and that she was going to be swallowed up in the freezing lakes and fogs of the forbidding mountain.

  Something warm trickled down between her legs. The birth pain was one continuous ribbon of fire. She ran out of breath. She fell against a tree. Wanjiru knew now that she was far from home, that she had been lost and wandering for hours, and that the baby was going to be born in this cold, dark hell. All around she heard the scuttlings of wild animals; she sensed hyena eyes fastened greedily upon her, waiting for her to fall one last time. Wanjiru had heard the women in the marketplace tell of a woman who had been caught in the fields in childbirth and how hyenas had dragged the newborn baby off.

  I'll kill my son first, she thought as she clutched the tree, gasping, straining to keep the baby inside her just a while longer. And then I will kill myself....

  Wanjiru felt as if her body were being torn apart. She cried out. Then she screamed.

  She slid to the ground, tearing her cheek on the rough bark, tasting blood, seeing blood, and hearing, in the dense mist, the clicks and grunts of evil, scavenging animals.

  "Go away!" she screamed.

  Wanjiru felt around the wet ground for a weapon. Her hand curled around a rock. She tried to throw it, but she was too weak. Life was draining out of her; a sturdy, new life was pushing its way from her body. Her pain rose up and out of her skin and flew away to the low-hanging clouds and misty bamboo forests. Wanjiru was at the top of the mountain, and she knew she would never get down again.

  But her baby would not be food for the beasts. She would not let the wild animals of this terrible forest feast upon the grandson of the warrior chief Mathenge.

  Dazed and weak, the child nearly born, Wanjiru began to dig feebly into the mud. A grave, just big enough ...

  IT SEEMED TO her that she slept and that she was warm and dry. Half of her told her that it was an illusion, that she was still out in the cold, digging a grave for her baby. But another part of her told her that this was very real.

  She was back at the Native Hospital in Nairobi, where she had worked for five years as a nurse before leaving to live in the Nyeri District as David Mathenge's wife.

  She was having an argument with someone. "Why are our uniforms different from yours? Why are our wages so much lower than yours? Why are you called 'sister,' while we must answer to 'maid'?"

  The face of her white supervisor materialized before Wanjiru. It was the self-righteous countenance of a woman who told Wanjiru that African nurses simply didn't qualify for the same status as white ones.

  And then Wanjiru, in her strange dream, remembered that this was why she had left the nursing profession. "We are discriminated against," she had complained to David. "African women receive the same training and do the same work, but we are not considered the equals of the white sisters. Why should I trouble myself?"

  At that point Wanjiru opened her eyes and realized, after some minutes, that she was staring up at the ceiling of a cave.

  She lay thinking, trying to discover if this was real or another dream. The bed of dry leaves underneath her seemed real enough, as did the pain in her hands and feet. The air in this mysterious cave was warm and dry but gently illuminated by a fire in the center of its rocky floor. Silhouettes of people hunched together and eating squatted around that fire.

  Wanjiru stared at them. Then she explored herself; she felt inside her body and realized that the baby was gone.

  She tried to speak; it came out as a groan. One of those by the fire got up and came to her. It was a woman holding a newborn baby. "Your son," she said quietly.

  Bewildered, Wanjiru reached up and brought her son, Christopher, to her breast, where he began feeding at once. She studied the woman who knelt at her side. By her features, Wanjiru guessed that she was a member of the Meru tribe.

  "Where am I?" Wanjiru was finally able to say.

  "You are safe with us. Don't worry, sister."

  Wanjiru looked around the large cave, craning her neck. She saw more people, many more, along the walls, sleeping in corners and on stony shelves. She saw furniture made of bamboo, large crates with English words printed on them, rifles stacked in the shadows. A strange silence filled the cave, considering the number of people it housed; but the aromas were familiar and comforting, and the woman at Wanjiru's side smiled reassuringly.

  "Who are you?" Wanjiru asked.

  "We found you in the forest and brought you here. You are among friends." The woman paused, then said, "The soil is ours." She looked down at Wanjiru, as if expecting a particular response.

  But all Wanjiru, in her exhaustion and confusion, could say was "I—I don't understand. Who are you?"

  The woman's smile faded, and she said solemnly, almost sadly, "We are uhuru, sister. We are Mau Mau."

  44

  M

  ONA THOUGHT THE TRAIN WOULD NEVER COME.

  And then there it was at last: the whistle; the rumbling track; the smoke puffing up to the blue sky. People swarmed all over the platform—those, like Mona, meeting arrivals and others ready to clamber aboard and fight for a good seat for the ride up to Nanyuki. She stayed back by her Land-Rover as she anxiously watched the train slow down and come to a stop. She paid no attention to the first- and second-class cars, in which whites and Asians rode, but fastened her eye upon the third-class car. Finally—it seemed to take forever—she saw him step down.

  "David!" she called, waving.

  He looked up, smiled, and waved back.

  Mona pushed through the mob and met him halfway, saying, "I was beginning to think you'd never come! I've missed you, David! How was Uganda?"

  They put his bags into the back of the Rover, then pulled away from the noisy depot, with Mona driving.

  "I was unable to bring back any mealybug parasites," he said as the car took the paved road. "But I did stop at Jacaranda Research Station and observed the research going on there. A few of the parasites have emerged."

  "Any success with stopping the mealybug?"

  "So far, no."

  "There have been two outbreaks of coffee berry disease in the Upper Kiambu District."
>
  "Yes, I heard. But only a small amount of the crop was lost, and the outbreak has been contained."

  They followed the narrow road that was one of the many paved by Italian POWs during the war; it wound through the hills between Kiganjo and the Treverton Estate, a rich, verdant farming region where small, round Kikuyu huts stood among plots of maize, banana, and sugarcane. African children at the roadside stopped and called out to the passing car. Women trudging along the parallel path, bent over, hauling water and wood by straps across their foreheads, raised their hands in greeting. Mona waved back, feeling suddenly happy and elated after two months of running the farm without David.

  "What else did you learn at Jacaranda?" she asked, glancing at the man at her side. Mona had heard her Aunt Grace say only a few days ago that David Mathenge was the image of his handsome warrior father.

  "They still consider banding grease the most reliable control of mealybug. The Coffee Board recommends Synthorbite and Ostico. Jacaranda Station is experimenting with dieldrin, a new insecticide supplied by Shell chemicals." David shifted in his seat, rested his arm out the window, and looked at Mona. "How is the farm?"

  "I was able to sell this last crop at four hundred twenty-five a ton."

  "That's up considerably from last year."

  She laughed. "And costs for running the farm are up, too! David, I'm so glad you're back."

  He regarded her for a moment, then looked away. Green hills and reddirt tracks sped by; thick stands of banana plants were etched against the blue sky. Spirals of smoke rose up from countless cone-shaped thatched roofs. It was a peaceful, familiar scene, and David had sorely missed it. He had also missed Mona.

  "Will you stop and have tea with me?" she asked as she steered the Rover around to the side of Bellatu. She parked it between a battered Ford truck and a dusty Cadillac limousine, the former being in use every day, the latter having not moved since Lady Rose's funeral seven years before. "Or do you want to rest?"