A Grain of Wheat (37 page)

‘Where are you going in the rain?’ Wairimu asked. Karanja stopped at the door as if shocked by the question. He slowly turned round; his dull eyes flickered slightly, his chest heaved outwards. He was going to say something when a wisp of smoke entered his eyes, he coughed a little, and stepped aside. His eyes glistened with tears. The moment was gone.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I am going back to Githima,’ he continued
with decision. He went out, his bag and guitar slung on his back. Wairimu did not stir from her huddled position near the fireplace.

The drizzle tapped, drummed the guitar and the bag. Soon the dust and the soot soaked and started to slug down. He walked towards the bus stop at Thabai Trading Centre, through the greying mist, looking neither to the right nor to the left. A bus arrived at the stop, dropped passengers and then went away. Karanja walked in the steady pace of a person not in a hurry to reach his destination. He saw Mumbi (she must have come out of that bus) cross the road into the village, shielding her head from the drizzle by a Gikoi. His heart beat suddenly rose from near paralysis and quickened at the sight of Mumbi. Caught in the mist and the drizzle, she appeared more beautiful than ever before.

But how could he forget the deep concern on her face as she bent over Gikonyo, after the fall? This had thrust Karanja back into pain and despair. If she had only glanced at him, ever so slightly, he might have hoped. But she had seemed unaware of his existence.

Still Karanja’s heart beat. Mumbi did not see him until she was very near him. She gave a cry of surprise.

‘How is Gikonyo?’ he asked, without thinking much about the question. He guessed she had gone to the hospital because he had not seen her at the meeting.

‘He is all right. The nurses told me he might be out soon.’

‘I looked for you at the meeting. I wanted to see you. I wanted to thank you for the note.’

‘It’s nothing. It cost me no effort. In any case, you ignored it.’

‘Then I had not known what the warning was all about. I’d thought you wanted to see me.’

‘No.’

‘Never?’

‘Never again.’ They spoke hurriedly because of the drizzle.

‘Anyway, thank you,’ he said after a small pause. ‘They wanted to kill me?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I know. Mwaura told me.’

‘Who is Mwaura?’

‘He works with me. When Mugo came to the meeting—’

‘Mugo, to the meeting?’

‘Yes. And confessed—’

‘Confessed?’

‘Haven’t you heard? He came to the meeting and in front of us all said it. He seems to be a courageous man.’

‘Ye-es!’ She agreed, recovering from the shock, and starting to edge away from Karanja. ‘It’s raining. I must go home,’ she said.

‘Can’t I … may I not see the child … last time?’

‘Can’t you be a man and leave me alone, Karanja?’ she said with passion, and immediately turned away. Karanja watched her go until she was swallowed by the mist and the village huts.

‘Ye-es. He is a man of courage,’ he repeated in her direction. ‘He even saved my life: for what?’

Karanja resumed his walk. His head and clothes were drenched with water. Two buses arrived, one after the other.
NARROW ESCAPE
was leading, closely followed by
LUCKY ONE
.

‘Nairobi?’ inquired a turn-boy, already taking his luggage.

‘Githima!’ he said and clutched his luggage more firmly.

‘Then take them inside, quick.’ Even before Karanja found a seat, the turn-boy whistled and
NARROW ESCAPE
started to move. Then
LUCKY ONE
behind it, came and passed. The two buses raced for customers at the next stop.

‘Step on the oil and let it burn,’ the turn-boy egged the driver. Each bus wanted to reach Nairobi first, because of people returning home from the Uhuru celebrations in the city.

Within a short time the bus reached the Githima stop. Karanja got out and the bus ran on, already about half-a-mile behind its rival. Karanja went into an eating-house by the road. The place was crowded with people sheltering from the rain. He put his bag and guitar against the wall, in a corner, and sat down at a small deserted table. When the waiter came round, Karanja ordered tea and a chapati with beef stew. He rested his head in his hands, elbows on the table, and stared at nothing. Flies crowded the cracks in the table which were filled with the heavy ooze of darkened sugar, oil, bits of meat and rotten potatoes. The food came and the smell of the steaming stew made
him want to vomit. He pushed it aside. Then he sipped a little tea. Again he stared at the table, without noticing the flies or the deposit along the cracks. At the door, people buzzed about Uhuru, Jomo, and the rain. In his mind Karanja was turning over the confusion of the day’s events, grasping at now this, now that, anything that would give them some sort of coherence.

He vaguely remembered the nightmare he had undergone at the meeting when General R. called for the traitor to go to the platform. Mwaura sat next to Karanja. Lt Koina sat a few yards away. The two darted surreptitious glances at one another and then at Karanja. It was then that he realized the words of General R. were aimed at him, and he immediately connected them with Mumbi’s warning. If he walked to the platform, people would claw him to instant death. He had a momentary picture of all those hands tearing at his flesh. Was this not what he had feared would happen when Thompson departed from the land? He was scared of black power: he feared those men who had ousted the Thompsons and had threatened him. He thought of standing up and publicly denying any guilt in Kihika’s capture. But fear nailed him to the ground. Then that man, Mugo, had appeared with a confession which relieved Karanja. Mwaura turned to Karanja with eyes tense with malice. ‘He has saved you,’ Mwaura said, and swiftly moved away.

Thinking about this, Karanja involuntarily shuddered at the thought of what would have happened to him if Mugo had not arrived on time. As a boy, once, Karanja saw dogs tear a rabbit. They tore its limbs and each dog ran with blood-covered pieces. Karanja now saw himself as that rabbit. But why am I afraid of dying, he asked himself, remembering the many men, terrorists, he and other homeguards led by their white officers, had shot dead? Then, somehow, he had not felt guilty. When he shot them, they seemed less like human beings and more like animals. At first this had merely thrilled Karanja and made him feel a new man, a part of an invisible might whose symbol was the whiteman. Later, this consciousness of power, this ability to dispose of human life by merely pulling a trigger, so obsessed him that it became a need. Now, that power had gone. And Mumbi had finally rejected him. For what, then, had Mugo saved Karanja? He
sipped another mouthful of tea. It had gone cold, and he pushed it aside. Life was empty like the dark and the mist that enclosed the earth. He paid for the meal he had not eaten, collected his bag and guitar and walked towards the door.

‘Here,’ the waiter called him back, ‘here, you have forgotten your change.’

Karanja turned round, took the money, and without counting it, went out. And she won’t even let me see the child, he thought sadly, as he took the road to Githima. Why did I want to see the child today? He had never felt such a desire before. A car rushed past and just missed him. He moved aside, still closer to the bank, almost brushing against the kei-apple hedge, without being conscious of his action. Thompson has gone, I have lost Mumbi. His mind hopped from image to image, following no coherent order. Incidents in his life would pop up and then disappear. What if Kihika was alive, and appeared to him, now, on the road? Karanja started, afraid of the hedge and the dark. The rain had dwindled to thin, straying showers. Karanja’s clothes stuck heavily to his body. He had gone to see Kihika hang from a tree. He had searched his heart for one has pity or sorrow for a lost friend. Instead, he found only disgust; the body was hideous; the dry lips over which a few flies played, were ugly. What is freedom? Karanja had asked himself. Was death like that freedom? Was going to detention freedom? Was any separation from Mumbi freedom? Soon after this, he confessed the oath and joined the homeguards to save his own life. His first job was in a hood. The hood – a white sack – covered all his body except the eyes. During the screening operations, people would pass in queues in front of the hooded man. By a nod of the head, the hooded man picked out those involved in Mau Mau.

It’s the hooded self that Karanja now vividly saw in front of him, in the dark. He could almost touch the slits through which the man inside the hood saw the world. It’s only in the mind, he reassured himself. He was now near the railway crossing. He heard a train rumble in the distance. He remembered the race to the train. The rumbling was becoming nearer and louder. One day people were collected from villages in Rung’ei Station for screening. One by one they went past him, and Karanja inside the hood recognized many
people and knew with pleasure that none of them could see him. The scene shifted to the meeting in the afternoon. ‘He seems to be a man of courage,’ he thought. And she had agreed with this. The picture of Mugo at the platform, like a ghost, rose before him, merging with that of the hooded man. Karanja stood near the crossing, contemplating the many eyes that had watched Mugo at the meeting. The train was now so near he could hear the wheels screeching on the rails. He felt the screeching in his flesh as on that other time at Rung’ei Station. He was conscious too, of many angry eyes watching him in the dark. The train was only a few yards from the crossing. He moved a step forward. Then it swished past him, the lights, the engine and the coaches, so close that the wind threw him back. The earth were he stood trembled. When the train disappeared, the silence around him deepened; the night seemed to have grown darker.

Mumbi wanted to run and walk, and surrender her body to the drizzle, all at the same time. She trotted, panting under the pressure of a load she could not put down. The news of Mugo’s confession came on top of what, for her, had been a trying afternoon. At Timoro hospital, Gikonyo had not spoken a word or shown any awareness of her presence. ‘He thinks I am bribing him to take me back,’ she reflected with pain, on seeing him shut his eyes and turn his head away in pretended sleep at her approach. ‘But I will not go back to his home, not if he kneels before me,’ she had resolved. Arriving home drenched, Mumbi found Mbugua and Wanjiku drowsing by the fire, without talking; the child slept on the floor. The warmth in the hut was a welcome contrast to the mud, mist and the showers outside. Mumbi changed into dry clothes without a word, her limbs making an effort she barely willed.

‘How is he?’ Wanjiku approached, cautiously, after Mumbi had sat down.

‘I will not visit him again,’ she burst out, in a tone that included her mother and father in things that constantly thwarted her in her search for peace among broken pots, and ruins. ‘Not even if I hear he is dying.’

‘Step gently into the road,’ Wanjiku retorted, her word edged with sarcasm. ‘Such words should not be spoken in his house. Remember that he’ll always be your husband unless he demands back his bride-price.’

‘My husband? Never.’

‘Sssh!’

Gradually Wanjiku soothed her spirits, and Mumbi agreed to look after Gikonyo for as long as he was in the hospital.

‘A sick man is never abandoned in hospital. Even an enemy is often rescued from danger. Besides, you need not go to Timoro alone. There is Wangari, a woman unequalled anywhere, in her industry and warm heart.’

Mumbi felt wanted again. She listened to Wanjiku, who told her about Mugo and the meeting, in detail. Mbugua went on nodding at the fire, an old man who, these days, rarely talked except when Kariuki came home during the holidays. Mumbi heard the story and felt that she ought to do something. What can I do, she countered the feeling with a question she knew nobody would answer for her. The fire made her drowsy. She was struck with exhaustion; the weariness came into her limbs, over her shoulders, into her head and heart, warming itself in every joint. She longed to curl against her aged mother and be comforted. What can I do, she asked again. Listening to the muffled noise of rain falling on the grass-thatched roof, she abandoned herself to that weariness which possessed her as if to rescue herself from the need to act. Mumbi remained in her seat, her body and spirit passive before a disaster she sensed with her eyes and ears. ‘I’ll see Mugo tomorrow. Besides he was present and so he knows,’ she persuaded herself in bed, on the floor, beside her child. ‘The night is dark and it is raining.’

She and Wangari rose early and went to the hospital together. Gikonyo sat up in bed. His arm had been plastered.

They told him about the meeting and Mugo’s great confession. He listened to the story with head slightly bowed.

Wangari and Mumbi saw Gikonyo tremble so that the blankets that covered him shook.

‘What is the matter?’ his mother asked, thinking of the pain in his arm. Gikonyo did not seem to have heard. He stared at the opposite wall, at something beyond the hospital. After what to them seemed a long silence, Gikonyo looked at the two women. He was more composed. His hard face had changed, almost softened. The scowl was gone. His voice when he spoke was small, awed, almost tinged with shame. ‘He was a brave man, inside,’ he said. ‘He stood before much honour, praises were heaped on him. He would have become a Chief. Tell me another person who would have exposed his soul for
all the eyes to peck at.’ He paused and let his eyes linger on Mumbi. Then he looked away and said, ‘Remember that few people in that meeting are fit to lift a stone against that man. Not unless I – we – too – in turn open our hearts naked for the world to look at.’

Hearing him speak thus, Mumbi felt herself lifted to the clouds and then pulled back to the earth by a tremendous fear. ‘I should have gone to him before coming here,’ she thought.

As soon as she got back to Thabai, Mumbi rushed to Mugo’s hut and pushed open the door. Everything was set as she had left it the other night. The fire had clearly not been made for a day or two. The bed was not made. A worn-out blanket with bristles sticking out, hung from the bed on the floor. Mumbi shut the door behind her and hurried to seek out General R. in his hut. She found it locked. ‘All right, I shall come back in the evening.’