Dance of the Jakaranda

by Peter Kimani

  After the plague, men and, increasingly, women arrived to the shooting range and placed bets. With the carousing that went with the shooting, seldom were hands steady enough to make a proper shot, especially if it might interrupt the mating animals. As if on cue, the humans would try similar antics, reaffirming that years under the sun had not wiped out their primal instincts. The shooting range gained a whole new meaning.

  * * *

  Master’s real name was Ian Edward McDonald, but there was nothing real about his identity. He could as well have been Wasike or Wanyande or Wainaina, as he fluently spoke the local languages. But since he privately enjoyed the sobriquet Master, he neither protested nor affirmed its usage. And there was nothing unusual about his name, for even the colony that he had come to serve for God and country had no solid name. It was called the British East Africa Protectorate before it was christened the Kenia colony. In June of 1963—six decades after the construction of the Monument to Love—the country would gain yet another name: Kenya. And the house that McDonald built out of love would be conferred with yet a new name—the Jakaranda Hotel—immortalizing the jacaranda trees he had planted for his love, Sally. By then the trees had long wilted, just as his mysterious love had long dried up, but the passage of time had only served to renew the memory and enhance the mystique of Master’s Monument to Love.

  And while Master’s house accumulated many stories over the years after its construction, it wasn’t actually the first building in the area. Babu Rajan Salim, the Indian briefly famous for fathering the child that Reverend Turnbull raised, was the first settler to arrive by the lake, although his modest rondavel was not as prominent a landmark. Not being visible is not the same as not being there, he often reminded his Indian workmates who said McDonald had built his edifice to spite them. Africans arrived later and built their huts on the other side of the lake to complete the triumvirate of hostilities that had originated on the seashores of Mombasa, hundreds of miles away, when the construction of the rail had begun. And as Reverend Turnbull liked to remind any who would listen, the sins of the fathers would be visited upon their sons a thousand times. Local elders, too, had their own proverb. They said, Majuto ni mjukuu, which meant children would pay for the sins of their forebearers.

  And so it came to pass that a sixty-year grievance between two old men—one brown, Babu; and one white, Master—fell onto Babu Rajan Salim’s grandson Rajan. And in keeping with the tradition of the monument, it all started as a quest for love.

  2

  On that balmy night in 1963, Babu’s grandson Rajan was at the Jakaranda Hotel, where he often could be found, waiting to take the stage with his band. While he was making his way toward the bathroom, the lights went out. The outage elicited a mixture of exasperated shouts, yells, and groans from bar patrons who instantly recognized the range of possibilities that the cover of darkness provided: scoundrels would flee without settling their bills, lovers would snuggle closer, and villagers would get a chance to hurl rotten eggs at the wazungu.

  The latter arsenal wasn’t as crude as it sounds; it was actually a downgrade from the stones that the revelers initially took to the establishment, because for decades racial segregation had been enforced at the Jakaranda Hotel, with a notice at its entrance proclaiming: Africans and Dogs Are Not Allowed. Actually, some Africans were allowed: the cleaners and gardeners and cooks and guards and those who ensured the wazungu patrons were comfortable. But dogs were strictly prohibited, for reasons few could remember, and which many found confounding given the centrality of dogs in wazungu’s lives. They were always talking or cuddling or walking with one. In another part of the colony, one mzungu had gunned down an African for stoning his dog when it attacked him.

  So in June of that year, 1963, with the onset of independence, when word went out that all races were welcome in the previously whites-only Jakaranda Hotel, most Africans suspected dogs would be allowed in as well, and so carried stones as a precautionary measure.

  When they did not find any dogs at the hotel, the revelers exchanged stones for eggs, because given their restive past with the wazungu, they thought it foolish to meet them empty-handed, especially when unhatched flamingo eggs ringed the lake that gave the township its name. The use of eggs, the locals further conceded, would confirm to the whites that they bore no hard feelings. So, an outing for drinks nearly always concluded with quite a few rotten eggs cracking on white faces.

  Rajan stopped abruptly, torn between proceeding to the bathroom and groping his way to the safety of backstage. A moment or two passed before some illumination glowed in the distance. A candle beckoned in the walkway, stretching a tongue that licked the walls at every swoosh of the wind. Rajan made a fresh attempt for the washroom, making short, hesitant strides because he still couldn’t see properly and the pressure on his bladder had slowed his walk. He had only shuffled a few steps when he felt, rather than saw, someone approach. He judged her to be a woman—her silhouette was framed by the faint candlelight, with tongs of hair looping a halo over her head. As she neared, he picked up her sweet, spicy scent; it descended on him like the sweep of an ocean wave.

  Rajan turned to the right to dodge her but her hip was there already; when he turned to the left, the other hip was there too, curved like a strung bow. Without uttering a word, the stranger planted one of the softest kisses he had ever received and then drifted into the darkness. Rajan stood, momentarily transfixed, the tap-tap of the stranger’s heels reverberating like bathwater trapped in the ear. There was a clicking sound above him before a burst of light flooded the hallway, synchronized with appreciative shouts from the revelers assembled at the Jakaranda.

  Rajan licked his lips—there was the gentlest hint of lavender. He found her scent fascinating. Some of the African girls he had kissed dabbed their mouths with Bint el Sudan balm, whose sharp, sweet taste turned their lips into sets of ripe guavas. But those were the chosen few, the urbanites who had outgrown their rural roots to acquire city tastes. Most village girls smeared their faces and lips with the milking jelly, because until very recently, man and beast had lived in the same quarters, virtually sharing food and drink.

  The Indian girls were not any better, though their use of Vaseline on their lips was a bit ahead of the times. Rajan had not kissed a white girl, so had no idea how they tasted, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. He simply had not come into kissing distance of any white girl, since everything in his life had been organized according to his color. He was a brown man in a black world which had been placed under white rule all his life. But now that uhuru was in the offing and barriers that had divided the races for generations were beginning to crumble, maybe this was his chance. People were testing the limits, exploring new horizons.

  The lavender lips were outside his experience. The idea that he could have kissed a white woman in the dark brought Rajan to a screeching halt, and his bladder released a drop or two in his pants. He momentarily feared he had dripped something else, and he unsuccessfully tried to steer his thoughts in a different direction.

  Rajan couldn’t quite remember if the stranger’s lips touched his lower or upper lip, or even whether he had opened his mouth properly to receive the kiss. Yet the taste in his mouth seemed everlasting. The burning sensation in his bladder subsided, and was replaced with a tingling of excitement. Although Rajan was only a few paces from the washroom, and could detect the acrid smell of the toilets in the air, he decided to scour the hotel and look for the kissing stranger.

  Outside on the hotel grounds, Rajan slowed down when he reached an intersection. Wooden planks with sharpened edges formed a compass pointing to the different directions of the establishment. Black marks now blotted out the scrawl that had earlier announced, Whites Only. Rajan licked his lips again. The mysterious taste was still on his tongue, seemingly stronger than the last time he had checked.

  He took the path that led to the clubhouse, or the farmhouse, as it was still known to McDonald and a generation of men who now s
poke in croaky drawls from years of dust clogging their throats. Those men, skin birdlike with age, still came to the club and trembled as they pointed to where the farm once existed, unable to mouth the name because of the emotion it evoked. They remembered the peaceful days when their hands were steady enough to balance minuscule measuring cups to get the right dosage of medicine for a sneezing cow at night. Now such doses were being administered to humans.

  Rajan cautiously stepped into the clubhouse and glanced over at a group of men sitting at the counter. Those men, once white, now looked pink, like pigs. They sat solidly in their seats, their thick necks holding heads that were once proud and erect, but were now drooping, defeated, hairy hands clasping tall glasses with frosted rims. There wasn’t a single woman in sight and the four men seemed downcast. The only things that appeared alive were the three rhino and two buffalo heads hoisted above the main bar counter; glassy eyes stared vacantly, as though frightened by the bleakness of their future.

  Rajan hurried out and took the path leading to the annex, which through colonial times had been reserved for Indians—yet even then, only a few token Indians were allowed in. The annex was almost empty now but for three men and two women. One of the women sat on the lap of a heavyset man, nibbling at the edges of his earlobe poking from under his turban. Rajan looked intently at the canoodling woman and instantly concluded she wasn’t capable of kissing with the tenderness he had experienced in the dark. The other woman was drinking from a green bottle, lips crimson red. She turned when she noticed Rajan, pushing aside a strand of hair that had strayed to her eye with an air of sophistication.

  “Beautiful bhai, you vant to breast-feed?” she giggled, touching her generous, heaving bosom with her two hands. “The milk is burning me up.”

  If the woman had the capacity to turn fermented barley and hops into fresh milk, and was still able to accurately note Rajan’s good looks, then she must have been more sober than Rajan assumed. He had a handsome face with penetrating eyes framed by dark lashes, which further amplified an aquiline nose that seemed perfectly chiseled.

  Rajan fled and took the path to the watering hole. This was simply a tarpaulin stretched across a frame of wrought iron that formed an outdoor sitting space. It was pretty new, created to accommodate Africans when the nation’s political developments pointed to the inevitability of uhuru. Since Africans would ultimately be invited to the main table, the hotel management had decided it would be useful to allow them a forum where they could acquire some table manners.

  But there was scant evidence that the management’s ideals had borne fruit. The white plastic tables sagged under a forest of green and brown beer bottles—proof that Africans had yet to refine their manners and order one drink at a time. Although only a few token Africans were initially allowed on the premises, and most were generally wealthy enough to afford some trappings of comfort, they still found the display of plentiful alcohol irresistible.

  When the Jakaranda opened its doors to Africans in June of 1963, some folks simply arrived barefoot or on bicycle and said they had come to see the property. Some saw with their teeth, unable to hide their surprise at catching glimpses of whites and Indians at such close quarters. Since most had no money to spend, they converged around a black-and-white TV set that had been installed in one corner and spent the evening watching the news. Undoubtedly nature, as well as man, produced interesting news on a regular basis. The Longonot crater was reported to have erupted the previous night, spewing molten lava that left a serpentine trail in its wake. But what most African revelers enjoyed hearing was the booming voice of their new leader, whose mystique had been considerable even before he took office. He was simply Big Man and all his lieutenants needed to do to get things done was invoke his name, or insinuate they were following his command. In such instances, they said they were “acting on orders from above.” So Big Man, who presumably lived above, inspired awe and dread.

  The watering hole, so named due to its proximity to the wild animals’ drinking point, became a favorite spot for tourists, as well as locals across the racial divide. But since all the races had never before interacted socially, their initial meeting resembled nervous animals coming in contact for the first time; if animals started by nosing their opponents’ horns, humans began by sizing each other up from a distance, commenting on news events, then finally warming up and sitting at the same table to share a drink.

  Rajan scanned the female faces and settled on several sets of lips turned in his direction. They were mostly Indian and African lips, thickened with layers of Bint el Sudan and Vaseline. There were no white women present. Rajan’s hopes were waning. He licked his lips again, shaking his head to fend off the gnawing thought: why would a single touch from a woman cast such a strong spell on him? The mysterious taste seemed to be dissipating now, which only heightened his despair.

  He stepped out and walked aimlessly, before taking the path leading to the butchery, hoping the kissing stranger had somehow ended up there. The butchery was the spot where his grandfather Babu sat during his maiden trip to the establishment, a visit that was made after weeks of coaxing. Babu had simply said, without any elaboration, that it didn’t feel right for him to venture into the Jakaranda for ancient historical reasons. When Rajan persisted in his demands for an explanation, Babu said: “A foolish child suckles the breast of its dead mother because he can’t differentiate between sleep and death.”

  Rajan often wondered if the ancient history Babu had in mind related to McDonald, the elderly owner of the ranch that became the Jakaranda, and who still lived in a house on the sprawling property. McDonald occasionally dropped by to watch Rajan and his band rehearse. On such occasions, the old man would stand, nodding his head to the beat, before retreating as silently as he had arrived, the shuffle of his feet interspersed with the gentle knock of his walking stick. Rajan noticed McDonald had started paying more attention to him since learning Babu was his grandfather. “Greet the old cow for me,” McDonald would say to Rajan as he trod away.

  Rajan never conveyed the message because Babu grew tense every time he mentioned McDonald or the Jakaranda, though he still managed to convince his grandfather to shake off that ancient history and show up there to watch him perform.

  The butchery was located in a building that had once served as the servants’ quarters of McDonald’s house. One wall had been removed to provide a view of the animal carcasses that hung upside down. This area offered a panoramic vista of the plains as well. The electric fence still stood between the establishment and the wilds. The animals still came to the watering hole but the mating had died down. Tourists’ cameras had replaced guns on the shooting range. Most people suspected the animals found the flashing cameras intrusive, or perhaps the animals could tell camera flashes did not threaten their survival like the booming guns, and so did not feel the pressure to procreate. But few thought the animals could have been corrupted by the humans, whom they had watched doing their thing for many years. The animals had acquired the human habit of experiencing thrill only when under immense pressure.

  Rajan considered the contrasting appearances of the cooking meat, the raw meat, and the animals roaming the wilds. One was at liberty to choose the animal he wanted killed for dinner. The majority of the meat was from goats, sheep—lamb and mutton—chicken, and turkey, all having replaced the dairy cows. The meat was grilled, broiled, fried, roasted, or made by the tumbukiza method, which involved throwing the meat, vegetables, and spices into one big soup pot to cook together. A charcoal brazier, the size of a man, sat outside the butchery—its wobbly, spindly legs holding amazing amounts of meat, the multiple apertures breathing laboriously, as if bogged down by the demand of giving fresh life to coal from dead acacia stems and shrubs and fossilized bones. Eventually, after spasms of seething, sighing, and hard breathing, the brazier would spark gently to life, turning the layers of black coal to dawn brown, before glowing evening red. The brazier was the glue that held white, pink, black, and bro
wn hands together, pointing at the pieces of meat they claimed as their own.

  It was a site of unbridled desire as men and women salivated over the cooking meat, while others watched the animals and developed their own appetites. All were there to eat their fill, and the task of feeding them fell on Gathenji the butcher, with his reassuring leitmotif, “Ngoja kidogo!” which meant one needed resolute patience when dealing with him, for his “wait a minute” often lasted a few hours, usually because Gathenji sold meat faster than he could roast it, and some hungry patrons were more than willing to induce his cooperation with a little extra money.

  Rajan surveyed the butchery, reminded once again of his grandfather. When Babu had visited for the first time, he observed even with the promise of independence that men were still hunters and gatherers; women waited at the table to be fed. True to Babu’s word, there was not one woman at the butchery.

  Babu and Gathenji had instantly hit it off. It was one of those quiet nights when the month was in a bad corner, which meant somewhere around the third week, when people had exhausted their midmonth advances and the next paycheck felt years away. Babu, slouched and supporting his frame on a walking stick, had barely settled in his seat when Gathenji marched over to the table and bowed in unctuous deference. “This is the man himself!” the butcher had saluted Babu, placing a wooden tray bearing a piece of meat on the table. “This is kionjo, just a small bite to silence the pangs of hunger,” he said generously, slicing the tangled meat open, the juicy parts yielding drops of oil as he proceeded to cut it into tiny pieces. “You know, we have heard so much about you, mzee . . .”

  “I hope you have heard the right things,” Babu had replied, glowing as he turned to his grandson Rajan. “He keeps asking me to tell him stories from the past. But I don’t know how he retells them.”

  “He does it very well,” Gathenji assured, then went on: “You know, now that we are about to celebrate our independence, you stand tall as one of our fathers of the nation.”