Outside the hut Mama Wachera paused to place a blessing upon this daughter, whom she suspected she might never see again. "I will take care of David for you," she said.
"David is my husband no longer," Wanjiru said, and then added the words which, by Kikuyu tradition, a woman could dissolve her marriage, "I divorce him. Do not fear for me, for I was born only once and I shall die only once."
Mama Wachera watched sadly as, bent beneath the weight of her burden, with a baby at her breast and a child on her hip, young and strong Wanjiru set out across the river and ultimately out of view.
SHE WALKED IN the afternoon sunshine, following a path that bisected newly planted fields waiting for the rains. Wanjiru walked in the warmth and laziness of the day, with flies droning in the hot sun, dust rising up from beneath her bare feet. Christopher, nearly a year old and very heavy, slept against his mother's comforting bosom, while three-year-old Hannah's head nodded upon her mother's shoulder.
It was not long before Wanjiru was joined on the path by a woman younger than she, who was wearing four dresses, a yellow kanga on her head, and a sling full of food and water on her back. She emerged from the bush and fell wordlessly into step at Wanjiru's side. Later they met up with old Mama Gachiku, the mother of Njeri, who had been lifted out of her belly by one memsaab and who had hanged herself in the gazebo of another. Mama Gachiku, like Mama Wachera, was the widow of the legendary Chief Mathenge, and she carried the Kikuyu machete, called a panga, with her.
Presently they came upon a stream. After helping each other off with their burdens, the women knelt and drank. They cooled their clean-shaved heads in the rushing water, then rewrapped their kangas into turbans. Mama Gachiku and the younger woman shared a cold sweet potato while Wanjiru fed both her children from her breasts.
They took up their burdens again and continued up the gentle slope of the mountain, not speaking, concentrating on their destination. More women appeared on the path until by the time they plunged into deep woods, they numbered twelve.
They followed Wanjiru, who had passed this way many times on her secret missions, smuggling food and guns to the freedom fighters hiding in the forest. When the women came upon a waterfall, Mama Gachiku cut an arrowroot leaf, folded it, filled it with water, and passed it among her companions.
They pressed on, silent and determined, each led by a vision that impelled pelled her. Mama Gachiku saw the body of her poor daughter, hanging from a rafter in the eucalyptus glade—Njeri, bewitched by the white man's ways and driven to a shameful and dishonorable death. Nduta saw the face of her husband, beaten senseless by members of the Kenya Police Reserve. Njambi and Muthoni were fueled by the memory of their father's murder at the hands of white Kenya boys. And Nyakio, the youngest of them, was driven by the memory of her brutal rape by four drunken British soldiers. The twelve women had been given the oath by Wanjiru; they all had sworn to turn their backs on their old lives in order to fight for freedom. They had all made the honor-bound decision to fight until the last white man was cast out of Kenya and, if necessary, to die trying. Each knew that the oath, once taken, bound them body and spirit to their word. If any one of them should betray that trust, if any should pass information to the authorities about the secret camp in the forest, if any should disobey a command given by the field marshal, then she would die a terrible death.
As the day grew cool and dark, as the forest became all shadow and shape, the women moved closer together and followed Wanjiru's red turban as if it were a beacon.
Finally, before the light went from the forest altogether, Wanjiru brought her group to a halt at the base of a massive, ancient fig tree. Saying nothing, she relieved herself of her load and her children, helped the others do the same, then went to kneel at the foot of the tree.
The others joined her. The women knelt in a circle, with their foreheads pressed against the tree trunk, and they chanted a prayer to Ngai, the god of their ancestors. Then Wanjiru sat back, scooped up a handful of rich black soil, gazed down at it, and said, "The soil is ours."
Her companions did the same until all twelve were chanting softly, "The soil is ours. The soil is ours." Lastly, just before the final curtain of night descended over the woods, Wanjiru took some dirt into her mouth and chewed solemnly. Her sisters in war did likewise. They ate the earth, renewing their oath, and swore once again that the soil was theirs.
46
W
HEN THE SIGN WAS UNVEILED, MONA WAS NOT SURPRISED TO see that it read WELCOME TO NAIROBI, CITY IN THE SUN.
The three hundred people present at the ceremony at this quiet roadside at the edge of Nairobi Wildlife Park, standing in the shade or sitting on folding chairs, clapped and praised Geoffrey Donald for his ingenuity. The slogan certainly gave their city an improved international image, they all declared, which was especially needed with Mau Mau being reported so heavily in the foreign press. This was bound to improve trade with overseas tour operators.
Mona stole a glance at her watch. She disliked these staged rituals, but she knew they served a very necessary purpose in the troubled colony. For one thing, to engage in familiar ceremony during a time of turmoil created a sense of unity and stability among the white settlers. For another, these events were meant to demonstrate that race relations were, in fact, good in Kenya, despite Mau Mau, and that the majority of Africans were obedient, law-abiding people. Nearly half the crowd today was "native," sitting on the ground or leaning on walking staffs, listening to Geoffrey Donald's speech. There were several prominent chiefs in the crowd, proud Kikuyu elders in their characteristic mix of Western and African dress. One such man was stately old Irungu, the powerful and influential chief who had convinced his people to attend this event and thereby show proof of good feelings toward the whites. Irungu wore khaki shorts, a checkered tablecloth around his shoulders, and, on his feet, sandals made from car tires. He wore traditional plugs in his earlobes; a gourd of tobacco was hung about his neck, and a thong which held his snuff container. He had wristwatches on both arms and was seated next to the deputy governor, who wore a somber navy blue suit and Eton tie. Mau Mau appeared to be the farthest thing on the minds of these dignified leaders.
Mona checked the time again, paying no attention to Geoffrey's speech, and scanned the edge of the crowd for David. But all she saw were "Tommies," British soldiers standing with their Sten guns in a large, protective circle around the audience. Any gatherings of Europeans with African loyalists were feared to be prime targets for Mau Mau, even though, as yet, in the five months since the emergency was declared, no such anticipated trouble had materialized.
It was noon. Mona wondered where David was.
She wished she weren't expected to attend these functions, but because she was a Treverton, and Kenya whites were locked into their precious traditions, she had no choice. Years ago her parents had fulfilled the settlers' craving for aristocracy. Now it was up to Mona and Grace to play the part. She hated to be called Lady Mona, but it pleased farm wives to do so. Even more, on this dreadfully hot day with dry, blasting winds, did Mona hate the royal blue gabardine suit she had to wear, with its fashionably tight-fitting jacket, tight-fitting sleeves, cinched waist, and wide, flaring skirt. To add to her discomfort, she wore white gloves and carried a white plastic purse, and her feet were squeezed into impractical white pumps. She couldn't wait to get home and into comfortable pedal pushers and sloppy, man-tailored shirt.
She felt those in the audience around her start to fidget. A cough here, a shooed fly there, and many makeshift fans attempting to cool hot faces. The November rains had never come; then the February rains had failed to arrive. It was now March with no sign or smell of impending rain. This was no time, Mona decided as she thought about her coffee trees wilting in the hot sun, for Geoffrey to demonstrate his talent for long-winded speeches. Revenue from tourist shillings and dollars was the thrust of his uninspired talk, and apparently he was going to achieve such a feat single-handedly by carting middle-class holidaymak
ers around on African adventure safaris.
Mona closed out Geoffrey's drone, which seemed to her to get more nasal and la-di-da with each passing year, and thought about David.
He had driven down to Nairobi with her that morning, a trip which now took on the average of only three hours because of the new paved road from Nyeri. They had had to stop only twice for tire punctures and once for radiator boilover. Then she had let him take the Mercedes while she had come out to the unveiling ceremony with Geoffrey and use.
David was using the Mercedes to search for his wife. Because it was unusual to see an African driving such a fine car and he was bound to be stopped and questioned, Mona had given him a letter of permission. But he was supposed to have been back by now; she hoped he hadn't run into trouble. Some of the Home Guard, African ex-soldiers who had volunteered to fight Mau Mau and who abused their temporary police privileges with arrogance and Gestapo-like methods, were known to beat up someone first and ask questions later. Mona tried to reassure herself that David could take care of himself.
Still, she worried. In fact, Mona was starting to worry more and more about David. Mau Mau incidents were on the increase. Instead of "blowing over," as Geoffrey had predicted back in October, the campaign of terrorism had escalated, and the majority of targets were loyalists—Africans who worked for or were friends of Europeans.
David had gone into Nairobi to search for Wanjiru, who had disappeared mysteriously a few days ago with the two children.
Since the declaration of the state of emergency Kenya's roads were seeing an unusual and inexplicable mass movement of women and children. Mona had watched them trudge along the dusty paths that bordered her estate, silent, marching women with loads on their backs and children clinging to their skirts. Where were they going? everyone asked. What had triggered this bizarre exodus? "Something is brewing" was the speculation. Whatever it was, thousands of women were streaming into Nairobi, the majority of them frightened by Mau Mau and hoping to join their husbands in the city. David had gone there on the thin hope that Wanjiru had joined that exodus and that he would find her there.
When the crowd laughed at one of Geoffrey's jokes, Mona was brought out of herself. She suddenly realized she had spent the morning thinking of David. Again.
She couldn't pinpoint when David Mathenge had begun to insinuate himself into her thoughts, appearing unbidden, in the form of an image of his beautiful smile or the memory of something he had said. Mona would be reading a book or arranging flowers, and she would find herself thinking about him. It seemed, in fact, once she really considered it, to have begun a long time ago.
When Mona searched her memory, she found David there all the way back to her childhood. As a girl she had resented him because of her mother's attention to his sister; as a teenager Mona had watched him grow into an arrogant political agitator; then she had blamed him for her brother's death; and lastly she had heard about David's heroic actions in Palestine and his receiving a medal. He had attended her mother's trial every day and had then taken the job as her plantation manager, which he had been working at these past seven years. It had come as something of a shock to Mona to realize how much a part of her life Wachera's son had been; in fact, Mona had discovered to her mild surprise that there never really had been a time in her life when she had not given some thought to David Mathenge.
But now she was beginning to find, in rising dismay, that those thoughts were turning into feelings. And they, too, she discovered upon examination, had been with her for a long time.
A pair of giraffes, grazing on a nearby flat-topped thorn tree, paused to look at the crowd of people. Mona watched them as they stood still, their tall, gawky bodies backdropped by yellow plains that stretched away to lavender hills; then they turned and moved on. They seemed unconcerned with the human presence. Perhaps these two had not learned to fear humans, Mona decided, because they lived on a protected reserve. Hunting and poaching were outlawed in this area, thanks to Grace Treverton and her unrelenting campaign for the preservation of Kenya's wildlife. It was through such areas that Geoffrey Donald drove his handfuls of vacationers, guaranteeing them good photographic opportunities of the lion, giraffe, elephant, and zebra.
Mona returned her attention to the road and felt her worry mount. David was late.
HE DROVE SLOWLY, anticipating the next roadblock, the next interrogation at the hands of half-educated, swaggering home guards who liked to push men like him around.
David clutched the steering wheel until his fingers dug into his palms. He had spent hours searching, and he had not found Wanjiru.
But what he had found had appalled him.
Thousands of homeless and husbandless women were living in the African estates of Kariorkor, Bahati, and Shauri Moyo Locations, crowded into dismal one-room apartments that had no plumbing or cooking facilities, making do with water from community taps in the streets, living in filthy, squalid conditions because they had left their farms, where they felt vulnerable to Mau Mau attacks, for the imagined safety of the city. In his search David had learned how the majority of these helpless women managed to survive—by attaching themselves to men in return for sexual favors. A passbook system had been established on the declaration of the emergency: It was designed to help the authorities monitor people's movements and to aid in identifying and capturing rebels. Each Nairobi resident was required to obtain a passbook, and the requirements needed to qualify for one were proof of employment for a man, support for a woman. Any woman who could not produce a husband or any male responsible for her, like a brother or father, was labeled a prostitute, arrested, and deported to her village, where she no longer had a home. Since none wanted to be returned to the shambas, the women either hid and lived in fear of being found out or managed one way or another to obtain "husbands."
Outraged at the filth, the smell, the wretched existence of these unprotected and abandoned women, David had gone through the tenements, and he had prayed with each fearful or sullen expression he encountered that he would not find his wife and children here.
In the end he had not, and now he was on the road going out of the city to meet Mona at Geoffrey Donald's new sign.
Was this the time, David asked himself as he channeled his anger and frustration toward the man he hated, to be writing slogans and attracting tourist trade? With Jomo Kenyatta, an innocent and peaceful man to David's thinking, undergoing an unfair trial and cruel detention, with twenty thousand African children out of school because the British had closed the Kikuyu Independent Schools, with people being murdered in their huts, with women being terrorized and raped by undisciplined Home Guards and giving themselves to strange men in exchange for protection, with Kikuyu killing Kikuyu and the whole of Kenya falling apart and disgracing itself in the eyes of the world—was this a time to be making speeches and unveiling signs? My God, David thought, the man must be as stupid as his face.
But David knew that Geoffrey Donald was not a stupid man; on the contrary, he was very smart and therefore to be watched with great caution. That was one of the reasons David hated Geoffrey. Another was Geoffrey's close friendship with Mona. The man tried to run her life, David had observed, forever giving her unnecessary advice or criticizing the way she did things. Mona, for reasons beyond David's understanding, tolerated it. He also didn't like the fact that Geoffrey was always over at Bellatu and that he seemed to spend more time with Mona than with his own wife. But what David disliked most of all about Geoffrey Donald was the way he sometimes looked at Mona.
David recalled now how Geoffrey and Mona had once ridden horses on the polo field. He remembered the day she'd fallen off her horse and Geoffrey had lifted her up and kissed her.
David's grip tightened on the steering wheel.
Quite a few African soldiers, stationed overseas during the war, had had intimate relations with white women—prostitutes mainly, but also European women who were curious about African men and hadn't grown up with the racial prejudice most Kenya white w
omen had. Those soldiers had done a lot of boasting. European women, they had declared to their comrades in the segregated barracks, were more responsive and more easily satisfied than African women were because they had not undergone the irua operation. More than that, the soldiers had bragged, European women appreciated the amorous skills of the African warrior.
It had disgusted David, whose heart and body had burned for Wanjiru. And after the war he had disapproved of those men who had brought back European wives. It was an insult, he had said, to their African sisters.
When he finally sighted the crowd at the roadside, David slowed the car and let it roll to a stop. He looked for Mona among the audience, which, he noted in resentment, was cleanly divided between African and white, the former sitting out in the hot sun on the ground, the latter on chairs under the shade. He had been told that later there would be refreshments at the Norfolk Hotel, with the whites inside the coolness of the elegant dining room, the "natives" out on the lawn. So much, he decided bitterly, for racial integration.
He saw Mona sitting near the dais.
As he stared at her, David recalled again that morning of sixteen years ago when he had seen Mona and Geoffrey riding on the polo field. He pictured them now—the way they had stood with their arms around one another, their mouths pressed together. Kikuyu men who had discovered kissing, in their exposure to European women, had declared it the greatest gift civilization had brought to Africa.
David watched Mona as she discreetly searched the edge of the crowd. When her eyes met his, her mouth lifted in a brief smile. He thought he saw a look of relief pass over her face, as if she had been worrying about him.
He cursed his feelings for her; they felt like a betrayal of his people.
Green City in the Sun Page 50
