Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  When the men had finished and refreshed themselves with cooked food and soured millet gruel, they returned together to their own villages, singing as they went, leaving the women to their share of the task.

  Several of the older wives climbed on to the roof with the agility of monkeys, and soon the air was full of flying bundles of reeds thrown up to them by women on the ground, caught neatly in one hand, and secured in tight-packed rows to the roof’s framework. Waseru watched contentedly while he put the finishing touches to the woven wicker door. Wanjeri carefully fixed the bundle of reeds from her old hut over the door and above the eaves at the back of her new dwelling, so that the continuity of her life should not be broken. Before sunset the hut was ready—bad fortune would come to the man whose dwelling was not completed between sunrise and sunset, for evil spirits might take possession—and the women had departed to their own homes.

  Next day a party was held for the elders whose sons and nephews had helped in the building. Waseru first spilled a drinking-horn of beer and a calabash of fat to the ground for the spirits of his ancestors, and then poured all day for the old men; but he himself drank nothing, for he was a young man not yet entitled to drink beer. It was long past nightfall when the last of the elders, walking jerkily and conversing garrulously with himself, stumbled down the path towards his homestead.

  4

  BEFORE the rains the bite of the sun grew sharper and heat at midday lay heavily over the dusty cultivation. The weeders, doubled over their work like bent pins, their damp foreheads almost resting on the ground, grew listless; and in the heat of the day they would rest in the thin shade of yam vines or castor-oil bushes, drowsily suckling their babies or talking in soft rippling voices. Down towards the edge of the great plain Laikipia cattle swam in the heat-haze by the salt-lick; the grass was pale and brittle, dry as the chewed-out fibre of cane.

  Rains were due once in each season, but in alternate seasons they were heavy: these were called the rains of the beans; the lighter downfall, rains of the millet. The reason for this was that after the heavier rains a period of cold, cloudy weather often followed. Then millet and sorghum would not ripen well, and might even rot in the ear. But beans, sweet potatoes and pigeon peas did not mind the sunless months and so could be safely planted in the heavier rainy season. But they, in their turn, would seldom flourish if planted in the lighter millet rains, for they grew slowly, and needed as much moisture as they could get during their growth.

  The rains delayed, this season; eyes were raised continually towards the depthless sky. Every morning the sun flooded those hard and empty spaces without impediment; no mists, hinting at moisture, softened the dawn. In the afternoons fat-bellied clouds drifted along the horizon, patterning the land beneath with shadows as though giant birds of grotesque shapes were sailing overhead; but there was no rain in them. As the processes of the earth slowed almost to a standstill, eyes were turned more often towards Kerinyagga, where dwelt God who sent or withheld the rain according to his pleasure. Waseru’s heart grew heavier with anxiety every day. He wondered why God, to whom Kerinyagga was no bigger than a stool, did not stretch out his arms to seize handfuls of the sky and squeeze it, as men squeezed juice from shredded cane, so as to wring the rain out of its formless fibres.

  Misgivings deepened as the old moon waned, and the elders debated whether a sacrifice should be made to God. For three days the moon died, and nothing could be done; but then soldier ants emerged from underground to wind their way in purposeful columns through the shambas, along their own walled highways; and the old men nodded their heads and said that rain, the bridegroom who never tired of bringing gifts, was near.

  It came in the afternoon, after a day of heat and flies. A huge dark cloud rolled like a line of black-plumed warriors from behind the hills and broke with a crash of thunder, loud as the sound of a thousand warriors’ clubs against the shields of the defenders. The storm hurled its countless spears of plenty with steady fury on the thirsty earth, and a solid sheet of water spilled from the eaves of huts. By sunset it was spent. People came out of the low doors of their houses like insects emerging from the earth, laughing and talking because rain had swept away the fear of famine like dust from the leaves of shrubs. Next morning the women left their homesteads early with planting-sticks in their hands and woven sacks of seed on their backs. The ground had been turned, broken and weeded clean, and a fine tilth was waiting for the seed.

  Waseru had obtained from the market seeds of the new crop, maize, that was so well spoken of by those who had grown it. It was bird-resistant, and its flavour was excellent when boiled with leaves and nettles: it could be easily stored and yields were good. Wanjeri was suspicious; she did not like the idea of these big new beans that were of many different colours. However, her husband ordered her to plant them, and it was not worth a beating to refuse. She planted the grains in pairs in the shamba where the millet had been, together with two kinds of bean. Down by the river, where the soil was always moist and black with leaf-mould, she made a small clearing and planted arum-lily roots. They took a long time to cook and Waseru complained if she gave them to him often; but then arum roots ignored droughts, and the time might come when the family would be thankful for their thick and rather tasteless tubers.

  5

  WITH the coming of the rains Waseru hoped that his troubles were buried like the seed of the new crop. But the maize had barely sprouted before bad omens began to appear. One evening Wanjeri found that her big cooking-pot had cracked, without reason, across the base. It was thrown out immediately—a cracked pot was like a broken-bodied man, and to eat out of it would bring deadly sickness—but Waseru knew that bad magic could have caused the fracture. That very day the shadow of a kite had passed over the homestead; and next morning, while Wanjeri was weeding, the baby almost fell from the sling on its mother’s back.

  No doubt of it, Waseru concluded: an evil magic still pursued him. Someone, some unknown enemy, must be scheming secretly to direct the vicious forces of magic upon him. Only the charms he wore had kept at bay evils that were still seeking a rift in his defences.

  Wanjeri, also, was in a bad humour. Two wives, an old saying had it, were like two pots of poison; it seemed to Waseru that one was bad enough. When he spoke of visiting Irumu to get protection for the new crops she threw back her chin and said: “Perhaps Irumu has a charm to stop holes coming in very old dresses, or a magic to make cloaks out of leaves.”

  “Silence, wife!” Waseru said sternly. “Do you not know that you will bring ill luck upon me, if you speak disrespectfully of the mundu-mugu?”

  “You speak of respect,” she answered. “What respect do you show to your father—you who force me to go to his homestead in an old dress torn and barely decent? Does your father wish to see his daughter-in-law naked?”

  “Woman, do not speak so!” Waseru exclaimed, deeply shocked. “Be silent, or I will beat you.”

  “Then I will run away to my father, who knows what a bad husband you are,” Wanjeri retorted. “My brothers, who are rich and strong, will protect me.”

  Waseru’s anger began to sing in his ears; he had half a mind to beat Wanjeri for her insolence. But he thought better of it, and strode off along the winding path that led out of the forest and to the mundu-mugu’s.

  There were two strangers at Irumu’s. One was having his fortune told, but he did not seem to be taking it very seriously. He was laughing and joking with the mundu-mugu, and appeared to be well satisfied with his fortune as it was. Waseru soon learnt from the conversation that the two men were on their way home from a long and adventurous journey undertaken to exchange tobacco for goats with the people of Embu, who lived on the mountain’s eastern slopes. Hearing news of famine farther on, they had trekked northwards until they had reached to the first villages of the Meru, a savage and barbaric people who held the last outposts of the known world. Beyond them, and below, stretched immensities of waterless plain that no man had crossed; and somewhere bey
ond that plain roamed the dreaded, wild-haired Somalis who had once fallen like locusts on the people of the mountain and destroyed their villages and flocks.

  The Meru were not true Kikuyu but their tongue, although rough and uncouth, could be understood. They were known as a treacherous people who liked to trade with their neighbours, but often ambushed peaceful expeditions in order to steal their goods. In spite of that, Meru was an attractive country for trade; goats thrived exceedingly on the rich well-watered pastures and the men were on the whole a dull-witted lot, clumsy in the art of bargaining. When Irumu’s kinsmen had reached Meru they had found the grain exhausted and the people existing on arum roots and a few bananas. They had sold some millet they had obtained in Embu for fabulous prices in goats.

  6

  AT last the two strangers rose and, after accepting a gift of snuff and some food wrapped in a banana leaf, went on their way. Waseru took his place opposite the mundu-mugu and said:

  “Irumu, the magic beans told you where I should put my hut, and I obeyed, and fortune has not been adverse. Now there is another thing that I should like to know. I am a poor man, with no goats to pay for the circumcision of my son, and perhaps, therefore, I may decide to go on a long journey for trade. Therefore, ask of the beans whether the omens are propitious, and whether I may undertake such a journey in safety, and by it increase my wealth.”

  Irumu rubbed his hooked nose and gave his visitor a long look with his shrewd light eyes. He shook the beans slowly in the gourd, asked them several questions, and read the answers in silence. Then he said:

  “ Waseru, the design of the future is shown by these beans as the design of a Masai warrior’s clan upon his painted shield. I have asked your question, and the beans have answered. You may undertake this journey, although it will not be without danger. There will be rhinos on the path and you will need a magic to make them look away. Hostile warriors will shake their spears and you will require a charm to bind those spears to the warriors’ hands. But if you take care to protect yourself with magic, in the end God shall be willing for you to increase your wealth.”

  Waseru heard these words with deep excitement, although he made no outward sign. He decided at once on the greatest enterprise of his life: he would go to Meru to trade in goats. If Irumu would make a charm to join good fortune to his shadow then wealth would return before him in the fat of Meru goats, and his debt would be redeemed.

  Keeping his eyes fixed on the red earth at his feet he asked, in as steady tones as he could muster, for a charm to ensure his safe return. Irumu brought a small cylinder of wood cut from a fallen tree-trunk lying across a stream, and hollowed it out with his knife. Then he poured into it some burnt earth and ashes mixed with chalk—earth taken from seven different paths, and therefore including dust from all the paths on which the feet of man had trod—and hung it around Waseru’s neck. Now Waseru knew that he could walk in safety, for he carried on his person the essence of all the roads that led about the world, the sting of their hostility extracted by the mundu-mugu’s magic.

  But, at first, it seemed impossible to raise a party for the expedition. Wives were too busy to leave their weeding, and of course the journey could not be made without women to carry the grain. Soon, however, word of Waseru’s plan spread over the ridges and circumcised girls volunteered eagerly for the trip. They had heard tales of Meru, especially of the wild good looks, the boldness and the strength of the young warriors. But Waseru had to reckon with their fathers, who at first refused point-blank to let their daughters go. The married men’s council was convened and a fluent address by Waseru on the big profits to be expected from the venture swayed the meeting just enough to get the project through.

  7

  ON the morning of his departure Waseru gave his elder son a sharpened stick and small club, and said :

  “Now, father, you are to become a warrior; and you must remember to do a warrior’s duty while I am away. You must protect the homestead and the crops, and your mother and your young brother, from all harm. If elephants come, or leopards, or if any evil befalls, you must run like a rock that tumbles downhill to the homestead of your grandfather, to give the alarm.”

  “I understand, father,” Muthengi said. “I shall run faster than a reedbuck when it is frightened by a hunter’s arrow.”

  “You must not stop,” Waseru added, “for anything at all. You must remember how the chameleon was sent by God with a message to the first man to say that there was to be no such thing as death upon the earth. Because this chameleon walked slowly, and stuttered foolishly on his arrival, a bird which God had also dispatched with the news of death delivered his message first; and therefore the evil of death is entirely the fault of the lazy chameleon, which is now shunned and cursed above all other beasts.”

  Muthengi promised, and watched his father stride confidently down the path, his freshly greased pigtails swinging gaily, with feelings of pride and importance; but when, in the evening, his mother called him to help her draw water from the river, he was angry and offended.

  “That is woman’s work,” he said. “Now I am like a warrior; my father told me I was to protect the hut and the crops; I will no longer carry water like a girl.”

  Wanjeri put down the stick with which she was stirring the pot, threw her head back, and burst into a torrent of laughter.

  “Ho ho, ho ho, you are a warrior,” she gasped. “A stick cut from the bush is your spear, a root from the forest your sword. You have captured many cattle, and they are forest rats, and killed many warriors, and they are francolins. Go, then, and show the warriors your circumcision wounds! Do you not know that young sugar cane cannot make beer?” She went on stirring the pot, chuckling to herself.

  Muthengi clenched his fists and was convulsed with anger.

  “I will go to my grandfather, he will not treat me so!” he shouted: and indeed he started to run away down the path that led to Mahenia’s. But then he remembered his father’s last instructions. Reluctantly he turned, and walked slowly back. His mother said nothing, but took her two big water-gourds and went to the river. He followed, and although he did not carry either of them, he helped to load them on to her back when they were full. Later, he went into the forest with a knife to cut some firewood. That, too, was women’s work, and he was glad that no one could see him at such an effeminate task.

  8

  IN his heart Muthengi hid a secret contempt for his brother because the younger boy was willing to perform menial tasks without complaint. Matu’s health had steadily improved since the thahu had been vomited out, but he was still a grave, quiet, undersized boy. He had a strange habit of wandering by himself in the forest. At such times he would stare with large, calm eyes at the bright, purposeful waters of the Ragati as they hurried towards the Sagana, at tall tree-ferns that rose in green cascades from mossy trunks, at brilliant-winged butterflies flitting in and out of shadows like fragments escaped from the rainbow that God had once chained under the waterfall. In his mother’s shamba he worked hard, and he had an inborn respect for growing things that made him a careful cultivator. Although he was younger than Muthengi and half the size, Wanjeri could trust him better to weed a bean-patch cleanly, to plant seeds neither too deep nor too shallow, or to dig arum roots without hurting the tubers. He had started a little shamba of his own just outside the compound, by the heap of middens. He weeded this himself every morning before following his mother to work, and looked at it several times a day in silence with expressionless eyes that screened an inarticulate delight.

  Wanjeri was pleased that he should display so early the instincts of a cultivator. As he grew older he would help her more. He would not despise the work of the shamba and think only of warrior’s pigtails, as Muthengi did. The warrior’s spear, she thought, had emptied many men’s bellies, but she had never known it fill them.

  Waseru’s homestead was protected against wild animals by a fence of woven sticks, and against sorcerers by a small log, buried under the ent
rance, filled with three kinds of powder having the property of depriving a sorcerer’s poisons of their potency when he stepped over the magic. Yet, in spite of all precautions, Waseru’s enemies found a way to direct the powers of evil through his barricade of magical defences.

  Early one morning, only a few days after Waseru had left, Wanjeri heard an ominous crack of breaking timber as she gathered herself together on the bed and prepared to rise. One of the poles supporting the bed had broken in two. The cold hand of fear clutched at her breasts; this was a certain sign of evil. Death was the fracture of the branch of life, causing the flesh to wither and rot; breaking was the symbol of death, whether it came to pole or cooking-pot, to gourd or hearthstone. Somewhere an enemy was scheming to break her bones in two, as the pole had been broken; evil was all around her, had destroyed her bed. Now the hut had become thahu. It would not be safe to sleep there again until a goat had been slaughtered and the contents of its stomach sprinkled around the poles and the walls.

  The day had started badly enough; but there was worse to come. After Wanjeri had swept out the hut, washed the baby and wiped it dry with leaves, and made up a fire, she pulled aside the brushwood which sealed the compound’s entrance at night; and there, immediately between the posts, were the droppings of a hyena. She stared for several minutes in round-eyed, fascinated immobility, while the clutch of fear tightened around her heart. It was true the hyena had not entered; but there it had stood and waited, no doubt trying to get in; and there it had left its dung, in the path of all who passed through the gateway.