A Grain of Wheat (32 page)

He could not tell how long he was in this state; but he was certainly woken up by a knock at the door. He opened his eyes, startled, and sat up. Who could it be? The knocking was repeated. Mugo moved
forward, cautiously, halted, moved forward and again halted. He hit against the lamp. It went out. The sudden darkness alarmed him even more than the tapping of the door. He fumbled for matches around the stones. And at the back of his mind was the urgent question: should he open the door? A third tapping, more continuous, more insistent, made him jump to the door. He stepped aside for the homeguards to enter; at the same time, he resumed his fearful search for matches.

‘Let me light the lamp,’ he mumbled, stealing a glance at the silhouette of the man at the door.

‘You don’t need it,’ the man said in a low voice. ‘The fireglow will do.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Sssh! Don’t shout, and – and don’t be afraid.’

‘Who are you?’ Mugo repeated in desperation, faintly recognizing the voice. The man laughed a little nervously, and Mugo felt the room suddenly turn chilly. He stumbled on a box of matches and was about to strike the box when the man whispered, secretively.

‘Don’t – the homeguard and the Police are everywhere—He is dead!’

‘Who?’

‘The District Officer.’

‘Robson?’

‘Yes – I shot him. I’ve been wanting to finish him – all these months.’

And there were tears in that whisper. The box of matches fell from Mugo’s hands. He had to retrieve it; but his mind was not in the act. A cold fluid had slipped into his belly at the man’s words; countless needles pricked his flesh.

‘Let me light the lamp,’ he said in a voice not his own.

‘If you like – perhaps it is better so – mark you, I am used to darkness – do you think they will search all the huts tonight?’

At last Mugo lit the lamp. He looked at his visitor.

‘Kihika!’ he gasped, involuntarily.

Kihika wore a torn, dirty coat, the khaki sort that soldiers wore in the last big war (now such coats were worn by old men) and muddy
once-white tennis shoes. His short wild hair gave severe lines to his face. Mugo edged backwards and leaned against a post near the bed.

‘I – I did not know it was you.’

‘Must forgive me,’ Kihika said, his eyes rolling round the hut. ‘I did not want them to follow me into the forest. Besides I wanted to visit you – I have always wanted to speak to you.’

‘There – there is a chair.’

‘Oh. I am used to standing. For days and nights you are on your feet. Standing. Or crouching.’

‘Why?’

‘You dare not sleep.’

‘Do you want to kill me? I have done nothing,’ Mugo appealed.

But before Kihika could answer, there was another blast of whistling. Kihika whipped out a pistol and scrambled under the bed. Mugo collapsed on a stool and felt he would cry. He would be caught red-handed, housing a terrorist. Then he suddenly remembered the lamp and blew it out. The hut was again steeped into darkness. The whistling died down. Kihika wriggled out of his hiding place and stood near the fireplace. Mugo was aware of the man’s silhouette above him.

‘We don’t kill just anybody,’ he started speaking as if there had been no interruption. ‘We are not murderers. We are not hangmen – like Robson – killing men and women without cause or purpose.’ He spoke quickly, nervously, and paced about the fireplace. Could this be the man who had burnt down Mahee? Could this be the man who had once spoken at a public meeting and made women pull and tear at their hair and clothes?

‘We only hit back. You are struck on the left cheek. You turn the right cheek. One, two, three – sixty years. Then suddenly, it is always sudden, you say: I am not turning the other cheek any more. Your back to the wall, you strike back. You trust your manhood and hope it will keep you at it. Do you think we like scuffling for food with hyenas and monkeys in the forest? I, too, have known the comfort of a warm fire and a woman’s love by the fireside. See? We must kill. Put to sleep the enemies of black man’s freedom. They say we are weak. They say we cannot win against the bomb. If we are weak, we
cannot win. I despise the weak. Why? Because the weak need not remain weak. Listen! Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them. Why? Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb. They shall not tremble or run away before the sword. Then instead the enemy shall flee. These are not words of a mad man. Not words, not even miracles could make Pharaoh let the Children of Israel go. But at midnight, the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on the throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in dungeon. And all the first-born of the cattle. And the following day, he let them go. That is our aim. Strike terror in their midst. Get at them in their homes night and day. They shall feel the poisoned arrow in the veins. They shall not know where the next will come from. Strike terror in the heart of the oppressor.’

He spoke without raising his voice, almost unaware of Mugo, or of his danger, like a man possessed. His bitterness and frustration was revealed in the nervous flow of the words. Each word confirmed Mugo’s suspicion that the man was mad.

‘You think we don’t fear death? We do. My legs almost refused to move when Robson called out to me. Each minute, I waited for a bullet to enter my heart. I’ve seen men piss on themselves and others laugh with madness at the prospect of a fight. And the animal groan of dying men is a terrible sound to hear. But a few shall die that the many shall live. That’s what crucifixion means today. Else we deserve to be slaves, cursed to carry water and hew wood for the whiteman for ever and ever. Choose between freedom and slavery and it is fitting that a man should grab at freedom and die for it. We need—’

He suddenly stopped speaking, pacing, and for the first time seemed aware of Mugo. Mugo sat rigidly in his seat, staring at the ground, sure that the homeguards would get him tonight. Kihika was mad, mad, he reflected, and the thought only increased his terror.

‘What do you want?’ Keep him talking. A mad man was not dangerous as long as he was talking.

‘We want a strong organization. The whiteman knows this and
fears. Why else has he made our people move into these villages? He wants to shut us from the people, our only strength. But he will not succeed. We must keep the road between us and the people clear of obstacles. I often watched you in old Thabai. You are a self-made man. You are a man, you have suffered. We need such a man to organize an underground movement in the new village.’

Mugo winced at every word from Kihika.

‘I – I have never taken the oath,’ he protested, weakly.

‘I know that,’ Kihika said. ‘But what is an oath? For some people you need the oath to bind them to the Movement. There are those who’ll keep a secret unless bound by an oath. I know them. I know men by their faces. In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman? No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not to lay your life for the people lies in the heart. The oath is the water sprinkled on a man’s head at baptism.’

Other considerations rushed through Mugo’s mind. He remembered the door was not bolted. He stood up, walked past Kihika, and listened at the keyhole. He thought of running out or shouting for the homeguards and then remembered that Kihika had a gun. And that gun had just killed a man. He secured the door and went back to his place. He was walking in a nightmare. It was not true that the man who had burnt down Mahee, the man who had just killed Robson, was actually in the hut. He felt a tired desire to speak but could not think of anything to say or do. By now the village was deathly still: the whistles and the gunfire were things that happened in years past. But Kihika was there, no longer panting, or pacing nervously, apparently composed. He was real.

‘I will meet you in a week’s time,’ Kihika was saying triumphantly. Mugo nodded his head. Kihika carefully arranged the place of their next meeting at Kinenie Forest.

No sooner had Kihika finished talking than the stillness was torn for the third time, with distant screams and shots. The screams and the shots rose intermittently and this time did not cease. (The following day Mugo learnt that a number of men, Mau Mau suspects, had been taken from their homes in connection with Robson’s death. Two men
from the village shot down in the night were later described in newspapers as being members of the gang that had set upon a barely armed District Officer whose service to the District was widely known.) Kihika went to the door and listened. Again Mugo thought of grappling with Kihika and shouting for help.

‘I must go – perhaps they will search the houses,’ Kihika said in whisper. His nervousness had come back; he was again a man on the run. He opened the door and then quietly shut it.

‘Remember our meeting,’ he said, before slipping out into the dark, to disappear as suddenly and quietly as he had come.

Mugo stood, still, in the middle of his new hut for a few minutes. The ground below his feet was not firm. Then he ran to the door, flung it open, half-hoping to shout for help. He gazed into the night. For the third time he bolted the door. But why bolt the door? Why should he? It was better to be without a door rather than that it should be there and yet bring in cold and danger. He unbolted the door and slowly walked to bed, where he sat and held his face in his hands. He took out a dirty handkerchief to wipe his face and neck; but half-way in the act, he forgot about the cold sweat; the handkerchief slumped back to his knees. He had once heard noises in the wind, long ago, and had been unable to pick one consistent note; now the noises were in his head.

A few minutes ago, lying on the bed, in this room, the future held promise. Everything in the hut was in the same place as before, but the future was blank. He expected police or homeguards to come, arrest him or shoot him dead. He saw only prison and death. Kihika was a man desperately wanted by the government especially after the destruction of Mahee. To be caught harbouring a terrorist meant death. Why should Kihika drag me into a struggle and problems I have not created? Why? He is not satisfied with butchering men and women and children. He must call on me to bathe in the blood. I am not his brother. I am not his sister. I have not done harm to anybody. I only looked after my little shamba and crops. And now I must spend my life in prison because of the folly of one man!

Mugo woke up the next day surprised that he was not yet in prison. He tried not to think of the encounter in the night. It was only a
dream. I have had such nightmares before this. Night exaggerates everything – our fears, misery and despair. Bush and trees appear like men. Ha! Ha! Ha! But his ill-attempts at self-comfort could not undo reality; Kihika’s face was indelibly engraved in his mind; the unkempt hair, the shifting eye, banished comforting illusions and made Mugo shiver in spite of daylight. Imagine a man who has been walking through a twilight and feels security in his isolation. Then suddenly darkness descends; and he finds he is in danger of breaking his leg because he is walking on a road that will end, any time, in a deep pit. For the next few days Mugo wandered between his hut and the shamba, every second expecting a policeman or a homeguard to tap him on the shoulder. Whenever he saw a soldier or a homeguard, sweat would suddenly form on his face, his legs felt weak. And not once did he forget Kihika’s shadow behind him, waiting for an answer. What shall I do, he asked himself. If I don’t serve Kihika he’ll kill me. They killed Rev. Jackson and Teacher Muniu. If I work for him, the government will catch me. The whiteman has long arms. And they’ll hang me. My God, I don’t want to die, I am not ready for death, I have not even lived. Mugo was deeply afflicted and confused, because all his life he had avoided conflicts: at home, or at school, he rarely joined the company of other boys for fear of being involved in brawls that might ruin his chances of a better future. His argument went like this: if you don’t traffic with evil, then evil ought not to touch you; if you leave people alone, then they ought to leave you alone. That’s why, now, at night, still unable to solve his dilemma, Mugo only moaned inside, puzzled: have I stolen anything from anybody? No! Have I ever shat inside a neighbour’s courtyard? No. Have I killed anybody? No. How then can Kihika to whom I have done no harm do this to me?

Jealousy, he decided, unable to find another answer to his own question. The reflection revived his old hatred of Kihika now so strong it almost choked him. Kihika who had a mother and a father, and a brother, and a sister, could play with death. He had people who would mourn his end, who would name their children after him, so that Kihika’s name would never die from men’s lips. Kihika had everything; Mugo had nothing.

This thought obsessed him; it filled him with a foamless fury, a tearless anger that obliterated other things and made him unable to sleep. The fatal day, Friday, therefore, caught him undecided on a course of action. As was his custom, he took a jembe and a panga and walked in the direction of his shamba. To avoid meeting people, Mugo chose an unused path across the fields towards Rung’ei. It was early and all the fields were deserted. Here and there the fields were littered with broken sites where not a week before stood homesteads that made up Old Thabai village. Mugo’s heavy eyes discerned nothing. And his mind was a white blank dazzling the eye like the sun at midday. He was in that stage of exhaustion that comes from an accumulation of sleepless nights, heated, ceaseless, and directionless thoughts – that stage in which a man is irritable, ready to break at the slightest provocation without he himself realizing his danger. His feet brushed against the dew-ridden hedges and soon water, in broken lines, ran down his feet. His lower lip dropped; whenever he was agitated Mugo’s lip always fell. He shook everywhere. The trembling and the depression increased the further he walked. By the time he reached the Indian shops, he was very weak, and could not walk. So he dropped his jembe and panga near a mound of rubbish at the back of a shop and sat down to regain strength. At the back of every shop was such a mound from which came a stench of decaying rubbish. Indian children and sometimes men shat there. African children often rummaged through the heaps, turning over newly thrown rubbish with their feet, looking for bread or forgotten coins. Their feet would dig into the ‘small loads’. The boys would swear horribly and occasionally would throw stones at the Indians in revenge. Once three African boys were caught holding an Indian girl to the ground, just behind the heap, beside which Mugo now sat to rest. They were accused of raping the girl. Because of their age, the magistrate only sent them to Wamumu Approved School. Mugo was not thinking of these sordid details in the shop’s past. He just held his head in his hands and over and over again moaned: ‘why did he do this to me?’