A Grain of Wheat (35 page)

He heard Mumbi cheer him on. This roused him to the present. He acknowledged her cheers by increasing his pace. Soon he outdistanced Lt Koina. He ran furiously. He did not want to think about the past. He would never want to live through a similar childhood.

So the drama gathered speed. Koina made a bid to bridge the gap between him and the General. But somehow he could not summon his will to the race. He felt low. He had been like that for two days now. He could not understand it. He had seen much during the Second World War and in the War for Independence. These should have taught him to expect the unexpected in life. He had for instance been quite proud of having been a cook during the Second World War. After the war, he proudly talked about it, until constant unemployment frustrated him and half-opened his eyes. Koina was to become one of those people who ran into trouble with employers because he was forever demanding his rights. He would cite his services to the whiteman during the war and claimed that this entitled him to better treatment. In a shoe-factory near his home, he once told the boss in front of the other workers: ‘I want more money. I want a decent house and enough food, just like you. I want a car like yours.’
He was kicked out of the factory. This sobered him a little. It was after this that he went to work for the woman. He had liked her dog. As a boy he had owned a pack of dogs which he used for hunting antelopes. How he would have loved to take her well-fed dog for a real chase of hare and antelopes in the forest! It seemed to please her that he and her dog got on so well. She gave him presents. Every Christmas. Then he started thinking. The amount of steak the dog ate could have fed a whole family. The amount of money spent on the dog was more than the total wages of ten Kenyans. The dog had its own room in the house, with a bed and sheets and blankets! And what about the woman? She had no husband, no children, no extended family. Yet her big house could easily have sheltered many families. How could all this be? Why should he live in a shack while this woman and her dog lived in such opulence and luxury? He became restless. How glad he was when he took the oath to join the Kenya Land and Freedom Army! He had seen the way. Independence, when finally won, would right all the wrongs, would drive the likes of Dr Lynd and her dogs from the country. Kenya after all was a blackman’s country.

The day he waited for came: he would now enter the forest to join the Freedom Army. But he was going to enter the forest in triumph over Dr Lynd. He led the men into her house and they took her two guns and a pistol. ‘Let me never see you again in this country,’ he told her as he felled her dog with panga blows, ‘Do you hear? Let me never see your face in Kenya again!’

In the years of hardships and deaths on the battlefield he had almost forgotten the incident, until the other day when he went to Githima to see Mwaura about plans to lure Karanja into attending Uhuru celebrations. And there in front of him was Dr Lynd and her dog. She stood there as if she was mocking him: See me, I have still got the big house, and my property has even multiplied. Githima had not in fact changed much. The exclusive white settlement seemed to have grown bigger instead. Why was she still in Kenya? Why were all these whites still in Kenya despite the ringing of Uhuru bells? Would Uhuru really change things for the likes of him and General R.? Doubts stabbed him. Dr Lynd’s unyielding presence became an obsession. It filled him
with fear, a kind of premonition. He had tried to share those thoughts with General R., but he could not find the words…. Even now, as he ran, the thought of the unexpected encounter made him shudder. The ghost had come to eat into his life; the cool Uhuru drink had turned insipid in his mouth. General R. was now many paces ahead of Koina. Koina stirred himself with difficulty. There was a roar from the crowd: this instilled new strength in Koina’s limbs. Only the struggle, only the struggle, he panted.

At the start of the eleventh round Gikonyo dashed ahead of Karanja. A new wave of shouting and screaming acknowledged this break in the pattern. This wave gave Karanja strength as he too made a desperate attempt to regain the lead over his rival. Soon Gikonyo caught up with Mwaura, who fought hard, in vain. Karanja also came and passed him. Mwaura lost heart and was soon passed by everybody. The battle was now between Gikonyo and Karanja. Few knew that there were hidden motives and passions behind this battle; the crowd merely felt its peculiar ring and tension. In the last lap, the two were running shoulder to shoulder. At one point it seemed Karanja would pass Gikonyo. But Gikonyo seemed possessed of a devil. Indeed, there was something reckless about the way the two ran. People strained on their toes.

It was at this time that something unexpected happened. As Gikonyo ran down the hill, his foot caught against a tuft of grass, which brought him down, trapping Karanja in the process. The field went silent. General R. followed by the others came, passed and ran to the finish. Then the field broke into feverish confusion. People rushed to the place where the two men had fallen into a heap. When Gikonyo fell, Mumbi dropped the handkerchief she had been waving. ‘Ngai,’ she cried, and ran across the field to him. She knelt down and examined his head carefully. Gikonyo was so exhausted and angry that he did not know what was happening. Karanja was the one who first recovered and pulled himself up on to his left elbow. At the sight of Gikonyo’s head in Mumbi’s hands, so delicate the hands seemed, his eyes lost life and he sank back to the ground. People buzzed around. Seeing that Gikonyo was not hurt, Mumbi remembered their estrangement. Embarrassed, she pushed her way through the crowd
and went home before anybody could talk to her. The crowd also broke away arguing and speculating: who of those two would have won the race? Some came out for Karanja; others were on Gikonyo’s side. As they disappeared, few noticed that Gikonyo had not yet risen. He sweated profusely; his face was contorted with pain. He tried to rise, groaned a little, and sat down again. It was only after he had been rushed to the hospital that people learnt that Gikonyo had broken his left arm.

And this ended the morning session.

In the afternoon the sun appeared and brightened the sky. The mist which in the morning lingered in the air went. The earth smoked grey like freshly dropped cow-dung. The warming smoke spread and thinned upwards into the clear sky. The main ceremony to remember the dead sons and bless foundations for a new future was to be performed in the afternoon. It seemed that everybody had been waiting and making themselves ready for this occasion. Except for the old women and a few other people who were ill or lame, most people from our village came to the meeting. This was Kihika’s day; it was Mugo’s day; it was our day.

Other people from Ndeiya, Lari, Limuru, Ngeca, Kabete, Kerarapon, came in lorries and buses, and filed out into Rung’ei market place. There were the schoolchildren in their khaki uniforms of green, red, yellow – of every colour in the rainbow; the village children in tattered clothes with flies massed around their sore eyes and mouths; women, dressed in Miengu and Mithuru, with beads around their necks; women in flower-patterned calicos that showed bare their left shoulders; women, in modern frocks; women, singing Christian hymns mixed with traditional and Uhuru songs. Men stood or talked in groups about the prospects opened up by Uhuru. There were those without jobs, who wore coats that had never come into contact with water or soap; would the government now become less stringent on those who could not pay tax? Would there be more jobs? Would there be more land? The well-to-do shopkeepers and traders and landowners discussed prospects for business now that we had political power; would something be done about the Indians?

We sat down. Githua, whom we playfully called our ‘monolegged champion’, freely wept with great joy.

The crowd made a harmony: there’s something beautiful and moving in the spectacle of a large mass of people seated in an orderly disorder.

A tree was planted at the spot where Kihika once hung. Near it, and tied to a stone, were two black rams, without blemish, for the big sacrifice. Warui and two wizened old men from Kihingo village had been chosen to lead in the sacrifice after tributes to those who had died in the struggle had been concluded. Mbugua and Wanjiku occupied two prominent chairs near the platform. Chairs for the main speakers and leaders of the celebrations were arranged around the microphone that stood on the raised platform. Mumbi, who in the village heard about Gikonyo’s broken arm, had gone to the hospital.

We waited.

Again there was the breathless expectation that had hung over our village since the night. It seemed that most people still expected that Mugo would speak. They wanted to see him in the flesh and hear his voice. Stories about Mugo’s power had spread from mouth to mouth and were mainly responsible for the big turnout. It would have been impossible to deny the many conflicting reports that overnight turned into stimulating legends. In any case, nobody, especially from our village, would have taken any denial seriously. Some people said that in detention Mugo had been shot at and no bullet would touch his skin. Through these powers, Mugo had been responsible for many escapes from detention of men who later went to fight in the forest. And who but Mugo could have smuggled letters from the camps to Members of Parliament in England? There were those who suggested that he had even been at the battle of Mahee and had fought side by side with Kihika. All these stories were now freely circulating in the meeting. We sang song after song about Kihika and Mugo. A calm holiness united our hearts. Like those who had come from afar to see Mugo do miracles or even speak to God, we all vaguely expected that something extraordinary would happen. It was not exactly a happy feeling; it was more a disturbing sense of an inevitable doom.

      *

The secretary of the Party stood in place of Gikonyo. Nyamu was a short man, heavily built, who during the Emergency was caught, redhanded, with bullets in his pockets. It is said that his rich uncles (they were loyalists) bribed the police, and this, together with his youth, for he was only seventeen, saved him from a death sentence, the way of all those caught with arms and ammunition. Instead, he was imprisoned for seven years. Nyamu now called upon the Rev. Morris Kingori to open the meeting, with a prayer. Before 1952, Kingori was a renowned preacher in the Kikuyu Greek Orthodox Church, one of the many independent churches that had broken with the missionary establishment. When these churches were banned, Kingori went without a job for a long time, before he joined the Agriculture Department during land consolidation in the Central Province, as an instructor, a job he still holds to this day. As a preacher, he used to sing and dramatize his prayers; he raised his voice and eyes to heaven, then suddenly lowered them. Often, he would beat his breast and pull at his hair and clothes. Protest alternated with submission, meekness with anguish, warning with promise. Now, he stood on the platform, a Bible in his hand.

Kingori:
Let us pray. Lord, open thou our hearts.

Crowd:
And our mouths shall show forth thy praise.

Kingori:
God of Isaac and Jacob and Abraham, who also created Gikuyu and Mumbi, and gave us, your children, this land of Kenya, we, on this occasion ever to be remembered by all the nations of the earth as the day you delivered your children from Misri, do now ask you to let your tears stream down upon us, for your tears, oh Lord, are eternal blessings. Blood has been spilt for this day. Each post in our huts is smeared not with blood from the ram, but blood from the veins and skins of our sons and daughters, who died, that we may live. And everywhere in our villages, in the market place, in the shambas, nay, even in the air, we hear the widows and orphans cry, and we pass by, talking loudly to drown their moaning, for we can do nothing, Lord, we can do nothing. But the cry of Rachael in our midst cannot be drowned, can never be drowned. Oh God of Isaac and Abraham, the journey across the desert is long. We are without water, we are without food, and our enemies follow behind
us, riding on chariots and on horseback, to take us back to Pharaoh. For they are loth to let your people go, are angered to the heart to see your people go. But with your help and guidance, Lord, we shall surely reach and walk on Canaan’s shore. You who said that where two or three are gathered together, you will grant whatsoever they shall ask, we now beseech you with one voice, to bless the work of our hands as we till the soil and defend our freedom. For it is written: Ask and it shall be given unto you; knock and it shall be opened; seek and ye shall find. All this we ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Crowd:
Amen.

People started singing, led by the youth band with drums, guitars, flutes and tins. Again they recreated history, giving it life through the words and voices: land alienation, Waiyaki, Harry Thuku, taxation, conscription of labour into the white-man’s land, the break with the missions, and, oh, the terrible thirst and hunger for education. They sang of Jomo (he came, like a fiery spear among us), his stay in England (Moses sojourned in the land of Pharaoh) and his return (he came riding on a cloud of fire and smoke) to save his children. He was arrested, sent to Lodwar, and on the third day came home from Maralal. He came riding a chariot home. The gates of hell could not withhold him. Now angels trembled before him.

Nyamu read apologies from the MP for the area and from members of the Regional Assembly, all of whom had gone to Nairobi to represent Rung’ei area in the national celebrations. He did not mention Mugo’s absence.

Next came the speeches. Most speakers recounted the sufferings of the Emergency, or else told of the growth of the Party. They were proud of Kihika, a son of the village, whose fight for freedom would never be forgotten. They recounted his qualities of courage, humility and love of the land. His death was a sacrifice for the nation.

At the end of each speaker, the crowd cheered or sang, even if the men or women had only repeated points already made. Githua’s voice, as he cried, cheered and shouted, drowned that of those who sat near him. All the time most people expected Mugo to speak. Whenever a speaker sat down, they thought the next on the list would
surely be Mugo himself. But they waited patiently because the best dish was always reserved to the last.