A Fool's Knot (34 page)

Now John began to show his anger. “Lesley is not a Kamba and we must respect her wishes as well. Anna is her daughter just as much as she is my daughter. As I have said, Lesley and I are agreed that we must wait until Anna is ready to make up her own mind about such things.”

“Saying is not doing,” mumbled Musyoka without hesitation. “If you ask your daughter now she will give you her answer. I have talked to her and I know that more than anything else your daughter wants to be like other children, to play with them, live like them and be accepted by them, not imprisoned in that palace of a house you are building. A calf with no mother must lick its own back and your daughter knows now what she wants. Ask her!”

“Anna has got a mother!” shouted John, slapping his hand hard on the table.

“One who neither listens nor gives advice,” replied the old man as he turned away.

“Your hen's curse doesn't worry a hawk,” replied John with great malice, his choice of words a deliberate attempt to hurt. For a moment there was silence. Then Musyoka's expression suddenly changed. He looked up and sniffed the air as his son asked a question without words. “You've been drinking beer. You never used to drink.” The old man dismissed his son's attempt at an answer with an impatient wave of the hand. “You always have time for your European friends, especially that white woman from the school. I begin to wonder if you are ready to take another wife?”

John scoffed, turned away and shook his head. So the old man was ready to open another front.

Danger is never anticipated. One minute it is nowhere in sight and then in a flash it is all around, only to disappear again as quickly, having accomplished whatever it wished.

“Father,” said John, turning again to face the old man, his voice pleading a favour, “there is something else I must ask.”

The old man stood on the far side of the room, his hands on his hips, his face contorted with suppressed anger.

“As you know I am now doing a different job. We moved to Nairobi so that I could take up my law practice again. I am enjoying the work, but I have a lot to do. There is a lot of travelling because my cases are all over the country. Sometimes I am away from home all week. And then there is the project in Kamandiu. I have to be there whenever I can to supervise the work and plan the next stages.” He paused for a while before coming to the point. He looked long and hard into his father's face, trying to judge how he might react, but the old man merely returned his gaze, the expression mildly quizzical. “What I ask is very simple,” he continued. “Since we are away from the house very often, can you please inform all of our family members that if they want to visit they should send a letter in advance to tell us they will be coming? If they do not do that, I cannot guarantee that I will be there. If they write to me in advance, I can send them a reply to say whether or not I will be around when they come.” John again looked into his father's eyes, but now the old man showed no emotion and was utterly silent.

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.

 

 

 

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.