A Fool's Knot

by Philip Spires

  Musyoka had feared something like this ever since his son’s return to Migwani. He could show no emotion towards the son, who continued to stand in silence before him. Musyoka had understood. And words like these can only be planned, can only thus be spoken with an intention to offend. It seemed like an age that they stayed in apparent silent confrontation. The old man searched for words, but none came. How was it possible to answer something that was so wholly and completely unacceptable? Musyoka saw in his mind’s eye a vivid memory of Mwangangi’s circumcision. He knew it would end like this. The thread in the family had finally found something to tie. His words therefore came as no surprise, since this is what he had feared for so long. His son wanted to reject his birthright, his identity, his family, his father. Just as Musyoka or anyone else, including Mwangangi, knew, that wherever I go I do not send greetings. Greetings are not needed when you visit your own family, because they will be given by word of mouth when you meet. A family member will always open the house for you. It is not written, but why write something that goes without question? Whatever the poverty of a family, a relative is always welcomed, always fed, always offered the finest the household can provide. And that is always accepted, always enjoyed, always finished, always expected. Write a letter to find out if my family will be at home to receive me? Of course Mwangangi would not write back saying that he would be present. He would surely always say that he would be away. This surely was the only interpretation of such an outlandish request. It was just a way of making sure that he would never open his doors to his nephews and nieces, to his cousins, uncles, aunts or even his own sister. This was his son’s way of saying that he would never pay school fees for other members of the family, despite his riches. This was his way of saying that he would never give presents to honour marriage or birth, despite his obvious obsession with giving presents to that white woman of his. And so Musyoka’s head was suddenly filled with images of Mwangangi’s circumcision, on the day his son entrusted a white man rather than his own father with the dressing of his wound. Musyoka was filled with self-derision, cursing himself forever allowing the white man to use some strange magic to bring Mwangangi back to life. He, Musyoka, knew his son would eventually betray. And he had been proved right. Why is it, he thought, that mistakes are only seen when it is too late to do anything about them? Since that fateful day when he, Musyoka, had stood aside and allowed the white man to carry off his own son, since that day his family had been cursed with the trickery. Now that family threatened to disintegrate, broken by the evil his son had harboured all these years. He must do something now, something to make his son see the error of his ways, something to make him see that what he, Musyoka, requested was only right. The one who casts the spell is never the one who breaks it, so I must act, he thought.

  “How dare you reject your family?” he shouted.

  John looked up and laughed in disbelief. It was a reaction that immediately inflamed the situation. “I am not rejecting my family or anyone else,” he said, but the tone was dismissive and struck home.

  “You have said,” shouted Musyoka, “that your house will not be home for your family, that it will be some kind of hotel, where you have to reserve a place, and, no doubt, pay for it as well!” The old man was now extremely angry and was shaking as he stared long and hard at the son he had long ago come to distrust.

  “I did not say that…”

  “But that is what I heard!”

  “I did not say that,” repeated John without a pause, laughing again in an attempt to calm his father, feigned amusement calculated to reduce the tension, but again it was heard as an insult. He should not have laughed.

  “A stick can bend only before it is dry,” said the old man. He spoke the words like a curse, through gritted teeth, his lips hardly moving. And with that he took up the knife they had used to cut sticks, crossed the room, took hold of the statue he had carved, threw it onto the floor in the same movement, and gave it a huge long-drawn cut across the middle with the heavy blade. The delicate woodwork split in two. He hit it again as he shouted, “And your white woman will have nothing of mine!”

  “What are you doing? What are you talking about?” John was pleading as he reached up to try to grasp the wrist that held the panga at the hand, his voice laden with a weight of impatience mixed with confusion.

  “Don’t play with me!” bellowed Musyoka, shaking himself free of his son’s grasp with a violence that surprised them both. His eyes now glared with anger. For a moment he was speechless, as was his son, whose expression of disbelief was itself not believed by his father. Musyoka was rendered dumb, unable to find any words. The expression, “He is playing with me,” rattled repeatedly through the old man’s head. His son had now rejected his family. “You know what I mean!” was all he could say, as he slapped the panga blade flat against the table top.

  “You know what I mean!” he shouted again, moving towards his son, his voice broken with emotion. Mwangangi jerked his head to one side, trying to avoid the wide swiping arc that his father’s arm described, but the flat side of the axe blade connected with the side of his head and he fell stunned to the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  August 1976

  August is the month when little boys piss, when mist covers the mountain and drizzle fills the air. This August day had displayed that same unreality. Michael and Janet had left Migwani hoping that the mist which muffled sounds and made breathing uncomfortable, would clear before they reached Nairobi. The rising ground, however, merely clung to thicker mists and their journey seemed interminable. With all landmarks obscured, the brown earth of the road seemed endless. The view from the car that Michael drove appeared timeless and unchanging. The road in front, the road behind and only blank grey mist beyond, all around. There were no landmarks today. Even the long half teardrop of Kilima Mbogo was hidden, so the journey seemed to exist in a cocoon of its own making, protected from an unseen world.

  Not until they reached the smooth silence of the tarmac surface near Nairobi was Janet convinced that they had ever left Migwani. She had begun to feel that the day was to be merely a nightmare and that soon she would wake up in her bed in Migwani to start it anew. The city approached, however, and convinced her of its false reality. It was as distasteful as ever, she thought, as the car sped along Mwang’a Road and the illusory wealth of the skyscrapers came into view. The journey had taken over six hours of crawling beneath the mist which surely shrouded the entire world, today.

  Michael had not spoken a single word since they set off. Janet had fought tears all the way, but had felt unable to cry. The shock was too great. Within a few hours it would all be behind her and now she felt truly glad, relieved it was all over. With a minimum of words, Janet directed Michael through the town, telling him that John’s house was in the Lavington area. Michael knew it well. Later, with Janet saying no more than ‘turn right’ or ‘turn left’, the car threaded its way along the narrow suburban roads which led to the protected and secluded house that was John Mwangangi’s family home. Like her first day in Kenya, Janet now felt only a numbness, an inability to feel or react, that the total strangeness created. On the day she arrived, she had seen so much that was new and travelled so many miles that she became immune to all reaction, and her new world just passed by like a dream. Today she could not react because she was tired of it, woefully tired and her thoughts were filled with a new disillusion, which devalued everything in which she had once seen hope. Today the dream was a nightmare.

  When Lesley came out of the house to meet the car as it drew up on the gravel drive, it was clear before a single word was said that she knew what to expect. Her face was full of concern and her eyes were already laden with grief. Almost before the car had stopped, Janet swung open the door and got out. Running straight to Lesley’s embrace, she burst into tears and cried for a long time. The irony of her crying only when she met the man’s wife would not be felt until later
, much later.

  The morning had begun as expected. She rose early and finished the last of her packing. As ever in these circumstances Janet felt full of energy and busied herself with her task, trying in vain to get all her clothes, books and souvenirs into the suitcase and travelling bag which comprised the total of her luggage. Eventually she gave up the idea and elected to tie together several items, among them a small gourd, a three-legged stool bought for two shillings in the market and, most importantly, Munyolo’s walking stick into a bundle which she could carry under her arm. If she could have known how embarrassed these everyday objects would make her feel on her arrival in London, she would have packed them away and carried her clothes under her arm. Later, they would make her feel like a tourist clutching mementos, and would result in a number of unwanted flippant conversations with fellow travellers, who were capable of talking about nothing deeper than the standard of hotel food and the vagaries or non-existence of Kenyan plumbing. But here, they seemed just like mundane luggage. So, with baggage safely assembled, ready to be loaded into Michael’s car that afternoon, she set off to town to her rendezvous with John Mwangangi.

  The town was abnormally quiet, unusually slow to wake up. A misty day in August was always like this. People were late in rising and reluctant to begin their journeys to the town when the weather was so cold. Thus the women were only just arriving in the marketplace, only just beginning to spread out their sacks on the earth so they could sit through the day next to their piles of mangoes, tomatoes and guavas. They would await the arrival of the day’s buses from Nairobi and Mombasa, hoping that a weary traveller would buy their fruit. The shoemaker, industrious as ever, had arrived at his usual time and already his shoes, car tyres and lengths of rubber were spread about him under the tree that served as his pitch in the town. And the now familiar Munyasya was still asleep at the base of his tree, still clutching the beer bottle he had not yet refilled.

  Janet eventually arrived at the corner of the marketplace, outside the blue-painted front wall of the Safari. She had taken much longer than expected to reach there, having called in at several of the shops along the way to bid what turned out to be lengthy goodbyes to people she had known for two years. So now she was rushing and she went alone into the bar and asked if John had gone out. The barman, lazily polishing the glasses left unwashed from the night before, told her that he had not yet seen Mwangangi. He also confirmed that he had not gone out himself since unlocking the doors, so John was surely still in his room. He directed her to number four.

  After crossing the courtyard behind the bar, Janet knocked repeatedly on the door but received no answer. After calling the barman and knocking again there was still no reply. Possibly John had left early, Janet suggested. Possibly he might have left via the door at the back. But the barman said in his halting English, it was impossible because the door was always padlocked at night and he had not yet opened it that morning. He beckoned towards the door, Janet cast a glance and saw clearly that the padlock was still in place. He bent to peer through the keyhole of number four and then rose again, indicating with a turn of the wrist that the key was still in the lock. He turned the handle and put his shoulder against the door, but it did not give. Janet smiled and suggested that John might have overslept, probably after having had too many beers. “No,” said the barman, John Mwangangi had drunk no more beers last night. He had gone straight to his room and then met his father. They knocked hard on the door, but there was still no response from inside. “Wait,” said the barman, raising a finger towards Janet, as if giving a warning. She tried to explain to him that she had arranged to meet Mwangangi. He was expecting her. He would not have left without first visiting her at the school. She was afraid that the barman had not understood her and, when he set off back towards the bar, she followed him. He gestured that she should wait there, but she still followed.

  A few moments later, still following him, she was back at the door to number four. The barman, as ever unhurried to the point of apparent lethargy, fumbled with a large bunch of keys he kept on a nail behind the bar until he had found a particular one and then, with Janet in tow, returned to the courtyard. Standing on a chair, he reached into the still dark room through its wire-mesh covered window and, using a piece of stiff wire, he fumbled as he tried to latch a loop around the key on the inside of the door. Still there was no sound from within, not even when the key jangled onto the floor, as it fell from the lock.

  “Finish,” he said with a satisfied smile. He got down from his chair and then inserted his copy of the key for number four in the lock, turned it and then swung open the door. Having poked his head around the door, he was about to conclude that the room was, indeed, empty. He saw that there was no one in the made-up bed and, as he announced this, Janet almost began to turn to make her way out of the bar to seek John in the town.

  Then the barman gasped and rushed into the room, flinging the door wide open and causing it to bang hard against the concrete wall. As Janet followed him, he gave a great shout and she saw him confronting an old man, who was crouched on the floor by the far wall opposite the door. The old man’s eyes were wide open, staring and not blinking. The barman bent down and prised the old man’s fingers from the handle of a panga that he held, it seemed, like a vice. Janet could now see the face clearly and recognised Musyoka, John’s father. But still he did not move. He simply stared into space, apparently oblivious of the man who confronted him and who forcefully wrested the panga from his grasp.

  Now daring to step fully inside the room, Janet looked around. John was not there, but there was a smell, a sweet smell… And then she looked down to the floor by the bed. “Oh my God,” she screamed and cried and screamed again, her voice a weight of terror. The barman, startled, turned around, the wrong way, as it happened, to look at her. His eyes followed the line she pointed, but he could not see from where he stood. The bed was in the way. Still she screamed, but no sound came now, only tears, while fear rooted her to the floor. Mwinzi took the two steps needed to stand at her side so he could see along the wall under the window next to the bed. He gave a deep groan, as if breathing out his soul.

  John’s body was almost under the bed, which Musyoka had clearly pushed against the wall after his son had fallen. Only the remains of his head protruded from under the cover and that was an unrecognisable mass of blood, bone, brain and hair. The first blow the father had struck merely stunned, but knocked the son to the floor at the end of the bed. John Mwangangi, son of Musyoka, had momentarily lost consciousness, but then had tried to stand. As he did, the old man struck again, and this time with the sharpened edge of the blade. Again and again he had struck, cleaving his son’s head and ripping the flesh of his face from the bone.

  The two could not move for what seemed like an age. Janet felt herself scream and cry, heaving at the air to find breath. But in fact she made little sound, what there was being heard as a laugh. Mwinzi hardly dared to look through the fingers he wished would cover his eyes.

  And then he rushed towards the door, pushing Janet with him out of the room. He pushed her so hard he did not even notice she was trying to resist, and then he re-locked the door and ran away. He shouted to her, telling her to follow, but she could not react and she stood where her stumbling retreat had halted by the courtyard wall, opposite the door of number four.

  It was only a hundred yards from the Safari corner along the road towards Mwingi to the edge of town where, on top of the hill, the Chief had his office. The barman ran and arrived both speechless and breathless, but so incensed with fear he said everything he needed to say without even speaking. He grabbed the Chief’s arm and pulled him from his chair. A moment later he was outside again and rushing to the mud-walled building adjoining the office where the town’s resident soldiers brewed their tea during the quiet hours of their duty. He grabbed the arm of the senior soldier and instinctively the other grabbed the rifle it was his duty never to lay down as the barman
pulled him to his feet. They all followed without a word. They ran down the hill towards the bar, past shops in whose open doorways people now gathered to see what might have caused the commotion along the street, which usually felt so completely asleep.

  Back in the courtyard behind the Safari, a panting Mwinzi fumbled for his keys as the Chief, tall and uniformed, and the soldier with his rifle at the ready by his hip watched in still ignorant anticipation. They remained stoically oblivious of Janet, who stood nearby, still crying, her hands still clutching at her face. Father Michael, who had heard the shouting, now entered the courtyard and immediately took hold of Janet and embraced her. He was trying to console her, trying to ask her what had happened, but she could not speak. When the key was turned and the door opened, the three men went inside and were silent for a moment, and then the groans came again, full of regret. Through the open door Janet saw only Musyoka, the old man she once knew. Still crouched by the wall, still staring blank-eyed into space, only his arms moved, as he chipped away at a stick with his penknife. She did not know, and indeed would never know that it once was part of a carving meant for her.

  For five hours, Janet and Michael waited together in the mission under the Chief’s instruction not to leave the town. He tried to console her, to lessen the shock, but she was inconsolable. She couldn’t speak or eat or drink or believe that it was reality that attacked her. When the District Officer’s Land Rover drew up outside and John’s successor in the office accompanied by a policeman came into the room, she still could say nothing, nor feel anything, nor show any emotion.

  In the town there had been great activity. The Chief had commandeered the town’s lorry and ordered its owner to drive him to Mwingi from where he immediately returned with the District Officer and the policeman. The old man, locked away in the soldier’s room and guarded by his captor, had sat, immersed in a world of his own, chipping away at his stick. No one had yet thought of taking the knife from him, for he was surely helpless now. John’s body, covered by the sheet from his bed, lay on a table in the town’s health centre. No one entered the room to look until the policemen from Mwingi lifted the sheet to confirm his death. By then the news had travelled far and wide, conveyed on foot to everywhere within walking distance. It had gone by bus to the west, destined for Nairobi. It had gone south towards Mombasa and north towards Mwingi and beyond to Garissa. Within the day everyone who should have known about Migwani’s tragedy would have been told the story as the barman had found it. And all who told or heard the story were to be stunned by it. Old men, young men, women, grandmothers, children, girls, none had ever known a father kill a son.