Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  3

  IN the hot months before the rains Karanja took his new wife to the land Marafu had given to him and showed her the piece she was to cultivate. She looked at it in dismay and said:

  “What madness is this? Do you think you have married that engine that you sit upon ? If you had five wives they could not cultivate a piece of land that size !”

  “I did not say that you were to do it alone,” Karanja replied. “I intend to find other women who will help.”

  “Whoever heard of a woman cultivating for a man who was not her husband, or her father, or perhaps her husband’s brother?” Ngima said.

  “Europeans pay others to work for them,” Karanja answered. “Cannot a Kikuyu do so the same?”

  He called together all the fathers of unmarried girls on Marafu’s land and gave them a great deal of beer. Then he laid before them his proposition: that the daughters of each homestead should work for him for five days when the time of planting came. To each father he would pay ten cents a day for the daughter’s services.

  At first the fathers refused, saying that their daughters had plenty of work to do at home. But after they had turned the idea over in their minds for a little nearly all of them agreed. Five days, after all, could make little difference to their own shambas; and fifty cents was not to be despised. Karanja was promised a labour force of about thirty girls as soon as the rains should break.

  When low black clouds gathered in the valley he called the girls together and gave them grains of maize to plant. It was good seed that Marafu had sold him, all white; there was not a single black or purple grain. The women were amazed at this, but Karanja said: “Do you not know that white maize can be sold to the European mill for twelve shillings a bag, whereas the old-fashioned coloured maize can be sold to Indians only, and for six shillings?”

  All through the season of growth Karanja paid girls to weed his shamba and people wondered what would happen to him if the harvest failed. Then he would have no money left to buy food, they supposed, and he would die of hunger. Matu also looked on the venture with misgiving, but his son boasted:

  “The people here are all stupid, they know nothing of modern ways. Can they not see how Europeans grow rich? When this crop is sold I shall buy a bicycle and a clock, and everyone will say: ‘Karanja is a very clever man, it is we who are fools.’ ”

  A smile flickered behind Matu’s eyes and he said: “The mouth which utters a shout of pleasure is the same as that which cries for help. Remember the saying, my son: the leather cape in which a child is carried is not sewn until the child is born.”

  The hot weather came, and then the harvest; and many girls were called to Karanja’s to pick the cobs. They neglected their mothers’ shambas, where maize was also ripe, and several refused to hand over to their fathers the money Karanja gave them, spending it instead on ornaments at the Njoro shops.

  It was a good harvest. Karanja watched with satisfaction while five granaries were filled. He asked Marafu if he could use the machine that stripped grain from the cob, doing in a day what the quick hands of women would take a month to achieve. Marafu agreed and lent him the machine to shell the maize, and also a wagon to take it to the European mill. An elder who heard Marafu praise him for his industry said:

  “Now the European is angry because you have grown white maize like his own, and wishes you evil; he has openly praised your crop.” But Karanja laughed and said: “Do you know so little of European customs? They mean no harm when they praise openly a crop, or a cow, or a child.”

  The old man replied: “Whatever they mean, it will bring bad luck; for how can the spirits fail to hear, and bring evil to the crop, or the cow, or the child?”

  4

  A FEW months later Marafu called Karanja to his office and said: “Your maize was good, and this year the price is good also. You sent away twenty-seven bags and each bag sold for fourteen shillings. Here are 378 shillings, paid to you by the mill.”

  “Ee—u!” Karanja exclaimed; the paper money, more than he had ever seen before, filled his two hands. “Thank you, bwana; this is very good indeed.”

  Marafu smiled and said: “You are now a rich man. This cannot happen every year, so do not spend it all at once. Why do you not take it to the Post Office and let the clerk keep it for you? When you wish to spend it, it will be there; and thieves will be unable to take it.”

  But Karanja rejected the idea. The Indian might keep it for himself, he said; besides, the Post Office belonged to the Serkali, and if the Serkali knew of his riches they would certainly make him pay a larger tax. He put some of the money in a tin box and buried it under the floor of his hut. The rest he took to Nakuru; and he returned on a bicycle, laughing with pleasure like a drunken elder. It was the first bicycle to come to the farm and everyone hurried to his homestead to admire its splendour.

  The word of Karanja’s wealth spread abroad far and wide. Many people came to visit him, knowing that they would find plenty of food. Every week he bought fresh beef from Njoro, and his neighbours said: “Now Karanja is so rich that he eats meat several times a month; now indeed he is behaving like a European.”

  Such good fortune could not last. One evening Karanja returned to find his hut in disorder and the floor dug up like a shamba before the rains. With a cry of dismay he took a log from the fire and held it over the place where his money was buried. The flame lit up an empty hole.

  He ran at once to Marafu, and an enquiry was held; but no one displayed the hand of guilt. Next day a policeman came from Nakuru and asked many questions. They were without result. A meeting of the elders was held. The old men were disturbed, for theft was a serious business, but they knew of no one to accuse.

  “There is nothing we can do,” they decided. “If Karanja sacrifices to the spirits and obtains a good charm, he may escape another time.”

  Matu, alone, was not prepared to let the matter rest. A son’s loss was his own, and that which had been stolen must be returned, or compensation paid. It had always been so.

  “What thief is willing to return his loot?” Karanja said wearily.

  “He can be made to do so,” Matu answered. “Is not that the way in which the law is kept? Europeans have many policemen; these men walk about openly looking for stolen property, and if they do not find it, what can they do? Theirs is a foolish, clumsy method. Before Europeans came we had no policeman, yet only in seasons of famine were there serious thefts. And I do not remember a case where a thief was not made to return what he had taken.”

  “Those methods belong to the past,” Karanja said.

  “No,” answered Matu, “the power of magic will never die. I will go to our own country and find a man who will know how to curse the thief who robbed your hut.”

  “That is all nonsense,” Karanja said impatiently. “No person has power to do as you say. People do not believe in that any longer.”

  Matu took a pinch of snuff and looked calmly at his son. “Always the son knows better than his father,” he remarked. “Can a man bring a thief to confession by learning how to write, or to wear shirts? I shall fetch a sorcerer, and you will see.”

  5

  MATU brought back a shrivelled, grey-haired man with a wrinkled face like worn leather and deep-set eyes as bright as a bird’s. He walked with crooked back and bent knees, and wore an old-fashioned ox-hide cloak that flapped about his calves.

  “This sorcerer will find the stolen money,” Matu told his son, “and soon your wealth will be restored.”

  “What is his fee?” Karanja asked.

  “It is high,” Matu admitted. “I have promised him thirty shillings; but it is worth it; you will get it back.”

  “I shall not pay anything,” Karanja said angrily. “He is trying to cheat you.”

  “You are obstinate and foolish, and deserve to lose your shillings; but as you are my son I will pay him all the same.”

  Karanja said nothing, but he watched the sorcerer’s actions with suspicion. The old man
sat apart under the trees telling the beans, and observed closely all that went on about him. One day Matu said:

  “Come to the big acacia above my homestead before sunrise to-morrow morning; there is something that you should see.”

  Karanja at first refused; but curiosity drew him to the appointed spot while the sky was pollen-yellow and the mountains black before sunrise. The sorcerer was crouching over a little fire. Smoke stood up like a white vine in the still air of dawn. They waited in silence for the sun. As it burst over Nyandarua’s crest, colour sprang out of the red bark of the acacia and its foliage glowed suddenly with a vivid green. The sorcerer rose to his feet, took from his bag a hen’s egg, and smashed it against a fallen branch.

  “May the body of the thief be broken as the shell of this egg is broken!” he intoned. “May he be broken utterly and trodden into the ground !”

  Matu handed him a calabash full of water, which he lifted towards the rising sun. He tipped it carefully over the young fire and chanted :

  “May the thief die as this fire dies at my feet! May life wither in his body as the flames perish in these burning sticks !”

  Finally he took the calabash itself and broke it with a stone, crying:

  “May the limbs of the thief be shattered as this calabash is broken into fragments !”

  After the cursing the sorcerer marked the faces of his witnesses with medicine and chalk, and said: “Within a month the thief will come to you and bring the shillings; and in another month he will be dead.”

  A few days later the sorcerer went, taking with him thirty shillings of Matu’s money. Karanja waited for some time, and then asked his father:

  “Where is this thief who is going to return my shillings as the sorcerer said? I do not see him anywhere.”

  “It is no matter,” Matu answered. “He will come.”

  Several months passed, and Karanja said again: “The sorcerer took your thirty shillings by a trick. Such curses are old men’s tales; I told you that your money would be wasted.”

  But Matu obstinately replied: “It is no matter. By now the thief has certainly died, but perhaps the money was already spent. If you had bought goats instead of shillings made of paper, you would not have lost them in this way.”

  6

  KARANJA’S young brother Kaleo, although not yet circumcised, asked many questions about schools. “Why is it that we have no school here?” he enquired. “There are boys who learn to become clerks, or carpenters, or even teachers. I do not wish to grow into an ignorant man.”

  Matu explained that the nearest school was too far to be reached on foot every day. His young son went on herding goats, but could not hide his disappointment.

  One day Kaleo disappeared. Matu had given him money to buy a new shirt at Njoro, and some sugar for beer. When he did not return next day Wanja went to look for him at the homesteads of his friends. None had seen him, or knew where he had slept. Days passed, and still he did not reappear. It was thought that he had been kidnapped and taken to Mombasa to be sold. Matu’s grave calm concealed his sorrow; he feared that he would never see his son again.

  Karanja was not so sure. “Kaleo may have gone to find a school,” he said. “If we do not have one here soon all the boys will run away. We must ask Marafu what he means to do.”

  The elders agreed to this idea, and a deputation went to ask if something could be arranged.

  Marufu said: “Schools belong to the missions, and the money which pays for them to the Government. But I will do this : I will give you a place to build a school, and the timber and nails. You must erect the building yourselves, and then I will find you a teacher and give him a house and his food.”

  The elders agreed to this plan, and a school of cedar posts and mud was built. Marafu gave two lamps to hang in it, and a big blackboard; the fathers, it was decided, must pay a shilling for each child. When all was ready Marafu sent for a teacher, and a man named Roland arrived. He was smartly dressed and at first he did not seem at all pleased with his new house and with the school. In the evenings he taught the men who worked by day. Karanja became his most persistent pupil and learnt to talk in English fluently, and to recognise the countries of the world on a map. He plagued Roland with many questions about Christianity, and foreign races, and the ways of Europeans. Some of the things that Roland told him made him begin to doubt whether it was wise to become a Christian after all.

  “Is it impossible, then,” he asked, “for one who has two wives, or more, to be a Christian? Must all the elders who have married several women go to this place of fires the Christians know about, and burn?”

  “No, a man with two wives can still become a Christian,” Roland said, “if he promises not to increase the number afterwards. But a young man with only one wife may not marry any more.”

  “Then,” Karanja said thoughtfully, “it would be best to wait to become a Christian until several wives have been acquired.”

  Roland looked shocked, and remarked:

  “That, however, is not what the missionaries say.”

  CHAPTER V

  Forbidden Dances

  I

  WHEN the school for young men was over in the evenings, Karanja often went to Roland’s house to drink thickly sweetened tea. The teacher gave him news of much that was happening in the outside world. He learnt, for one thing, that missionaries were opposing the custom of circumcising girls. They did not mind, it seemed, about boys, but for some reason they wanted girls to be left alone.

  “But girls who have not been circumcised before they become women are unclean,” Karanja protested. “They know nothing of the way in which women must behave; and they would most probably be barren. They are like a person who finds his way into a homestead by crawling under the fence instead of by walking through the gateway in the proper way.”

  “The custom is cruel and wicked, so the missionaries say,” Roland replied. “No Christian should have his daughter circumcised, or God will reject him. And, anyway, the Serkali is going to forbid the practice altogether.”

  When this reached the ears of the elders, indignant words were used. “What right have Europeans to forbid us to circumcise our daughters?” they demanded. It was suggested that the new law was part of a plot to destroy the Kikuyu people so that the Europeans could seize the land. “Girls who are not circumcised cannot be true Kikuyu,” many people said. “All would be barren, and then our race would cease to exist.”

  Rumours began to reach the Mau of serious trouble in Kikuyu itself. The Serkali, it was said, was going to issue orders that no more girls were to be circumcised. The missions were expelling all married Christians who refused to take an oath that their daughters should be left alone. Everywhere indignation sprang up, spontaneous in each father’s heart, like blades of young grass after rain. What right had the missions or the Serkali, people angrily demanded, to dictate the upbringing of Kikuyu girls?

  Soon something else occurred to confirm the belief that the behaviour of the missions was part of a plan to destroy the Kikuyu people. Three Europeans came to Tetu and moved from place to place casting spells on the people with a kind of magic. This consisted of an iron machine shaped like those used at railway stations for telling the weights of sacks; but it was not the same, for it had been charged with a magic that destroyed the fecunditity of all those, men or women, who touched it. These Europeans went first to missions and made all the Christians stand upon it in turn. But the news of this magic spread quickly and all who were able to escape from the mission ran away.

  For some time it was not known why the Europeans were trying to deprive the Kikuyu people of their fertility. Then Benson Makuna arrived in Tetu with the explanation, which the Europeans had tried hard to conceal.

  Had not Christians been taught, he said, that the Son of God, who had been sacrificed many years ago, would one day be born again as a human baby ? The Europeans, Benson continued, had learnt that the time was at last at hand; and that the new Messiah was shortly
to be born of a Kikuyu mother.

  This child would deliver the Kikuyu people from European oppression, and would rule over a great Kikuyu nation. One day he and his followers would govern Europe itself, entering into possession of all the Europeans’ fabulous riches. So the Europeans, panic-stricken, had resolved to bring sterility on all young men and women of Kikuyu, in order that the black Messiah should not be born. For this purpose they had sent the European sorcerers with their iron machine. For this purpose, also, they were forbidding the circumcision of girls. The uncircumcised women would be unclean and their babies—if they were able to conceive—would die before weaning. Benson charged all his fellows steadfastly to oppose this plot, if necessary by force, and to insist on the circumcision of Kikuyu girls according to the customs of their fathers.

  2

  AS the season of circumcision approached, excitement mounted. Young men moved restlessly around, like bees disturbed by something they cannot see. Wild, unsettling talk flew fitfully about the homesteads, flaring here into passionate speeches, dying there into a half-forgotten simmer.