Green City in the Sun (86 page)

     "Would you like to be my best friend?" she asked.

     He frowned, not understanding.

     "Or do you already have a best friend?"

     Christopher thought of the boys he had only barely known in Nairobi. Because his mother moved so often and they had lived in so many places since their release from the detention camp, Christopher and his little sister, Sarah, had never been able to make permanent friends. "No," he said quietly.

     "Don't you have
any
friends?"

     He looked down and dug his bare toes into the earth. "No."

     "Neither do I!
We
shall be best friends! Would you like that?"

     He nodded.

     "Very well then! I'm going to show you my special place. Are you afraid of ghosts?"

     He gave her a suspicious look.

     "My special place is supposed to be haunted. But I don't think it is! Come with me, Christopher."

     They followed the river while Deborah kept up constant chatter. "I'm supposed to be doing my lessons, but Mrs. Waddell is taking a nap. She's my governess, and she isn't very good. I was going to the white school in Nyeri town, but they closed it because so many white people are leaving Kenya that there weren't enough pupils anymore to keep the school open. Why do you suppose that is? Why are all the white people leaving Kenya?"

     Christopher wasn't sure, but he knew it had something to do with a man named Jomo Kenyatta. Christopher's mother had told him all about Jomo, who had spent as much time in jail as she had and who had been released at the same time, two years ago. The whites were afraid of Jomo, Christopher had heard. They thought he was going to take revenge on them for having kept him in prison for so many years.

     "Actually I
do
have a friend," Deborah said as they skirted the polo field. She swung her arms as she walked and kicked stones with her bare feet. "His name is Terry Donald, and he used to go to the white boys' school in Nyeri; but that was closed down, too. He has two brothers and two sisters, and they're all in boarding school in Nairobi. But Terry's too young to go there. He's only ten. He has a tutor to give him lessons. He lives in Nyeri town. His
father used to own a big cattle ranch called Kilima Simba, but they sold it last year.
Africans
bought it. Can you imagine that? Terry comes and plays with me. He's going to be a hunter when he grows up, and he already has his own gun!"

     They paused at the busy entrance to Grace Mission. A paved road passed under the impressive wrought-iron arch and widened into a treelined street that had a stop sign at the end and a policeman's kiosk. Large stone buildings stood among old Cape chestnuts; there were people everywhere. From one of the three school buildings came the voices of children singing.

     "It's the biggest Christian mission in Kenya," Deborah said with pride. "And my aunt Grace built it many years ago. She's a doctor, you know. I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up. I'm going to be just like her."

     Christopher tried not to stare at this strange, talkative white girl, but he was curious about her. And he envied her. She seemed so sure of herself and of the world around her; she knew what she wanted to be. For Christopher, such confidence was alien. Life in the detention camps had been unsure from one day to the next; he had grown up knowing only insecurity. People he knew and grew to love suddenly were gone the next morning. And there had been another little sister, a long time ago, who had died in his mother's arms. When they had finally been released from detention, when Christopher was nine and Sarah six, they had known only the nomadic, rootless existence of living here and there in Nairobi, of being watched by the police, of his mother's doing menial jobs for the few shillings that fed and clothed them.

     But things were going to get better from now on, Christopher's mother had assured him. She had finally gotten a permanent job at a hospital in Nairobi, as an ayah, a "maid," even though she was a registered nurse. That was why he and Sarah had been brought here to live with their father's mother. Christopher's mother shared a flat with two other nurses; she couldn't afford to keep her children with her. But soon, she promised him and his sister, things were going to change. Now that Jomo was prime minister of Kenya, Africans were going to be the equals of whites; Christopher's mother was going to be called "sister" and receive the same pay as white nurses.

     The two children went around the perimeter of the mission and came
upon a flight of rickety wooden stairs. They climbed the ridge, and Christopher finally saw the big house.

     "It's called Bellatu," Deborah said. "It's terribly big and lonely. My mother is almost never home. She works out in the fields. She says she is trying to save the farm."

     The young African boy stared at the house, which reminded him of the wonderful places he had seen in Nairobi. This white girl must be terribly rich, he decided, his boy's eye not seeing the peeling paint, the unmended shutters, the dying flower garden, the dried-up fountains. Bellatu was only a ghost of its former glory, fading and sad, but to Christopher Mathenge it looked like a palace.

     He followed the strange girl down a narrow forest path that plunged into trees and dense undergrowth. It was an old path, he could see, which had not been walked on in a long time. Presently they came upon a peculiar clearing in the middle of a ring of eucalyptus trees. In the center stood a rotting structure that had no walls; on the far edge was a small stone building with a glass roof. But directly across was a most remarkable sight. It reminded Christopher of the churches in Nairobi.

     "There's an old caretaker," Deborah said in a lowered voice, "but he's deaf. Would you like to go inside?"

     They slowly approached the stone facade, which had engraved writing neither child could read, and mounted the steps. Christopher had expected to find people inside, so he was surprised to discover that it was empty except for a big stone block in the center. Strangely a flame glowed at one end of it.

     "Look here," Deborah whispered. She took Christopher's hand and led him to a wall. There they saw, in the dim light, an enormous tapestry hanging in a wooden frame.

     Christopher was awed. He had no idea what it was. It looked like a picture, yet it wasn't. The trees and grass and sky looked so real. The golden eyes of the leopard peering through giant fronds made him quake. And there was Mount Kenya!

     Deborah's captivation was with just one spot on the tapestry, off to the side and looking slightly out of place—as if it had been an afterthought.

     It was the figure of a man. He stood shrouded in mountain mist, looking
as if he was trying to hide behind the ropy vines and sweeping moss. He gazed out from his linen world with dark, solemn eyes. He was very handsome, Deborah thought, with his high forehead and large, straight nose. Like a prince, perhaps, out of a fairy tale. And he was dark-skinned, but not like the Africans. She had no idea who he was or what he was doing trapped in that jungle of yarns and threads.

     She looked at the boy at her side. When she saw that he was impressed, that he was not afraid of her "ghosty" place, she was glad. "You're very brave," she whispered. "You must be a warrior!"

     Christopher looked at her. Then he stuck out his chest a little and said, "I am."

     They left the mausoleum, with its forbidding, silent block of stone and curious, faint rust stains on the floor, and went to the glass-roofed building. It was in shambles, with the glass all broken and nothing inside but dead plants. Deborah and Christopher did not go all the way in, but from the doorway they could see something that looked like a bed, all tattered and overgrown with weeds and vines.

     "What would you like to do now?" Deborah asked when they were once again on the sunlit path. "Are you hungry?"

     Christopher could not remember a time when he had
not
been hungry. So when Deborah suggested they go up to the big house and see what was in the kitchen, his mouth watered, and he was suddenly very glad he had gone to look at the white girl lying on the bank of the river.

     They found treacle buns still warm from the oven and a pitcher of cold milk. They ate with their fingers and wiped their hands on their clothes. Then Deborah said, "Would you like to see my most favorite place of all? It's terribly
secret.
No one knows about it. Not even Terry Donald!"

     "Yes," said Christopher, feeling important and full and enjoying his adventure with the white girl. He sensed the big house standing around and over him, and he wondered what it must be like to live in such a grand place, to have a kitchen that provided endless food.

     So again Deborah took Christopher Mathenge's hand and led him through the unused dining room, through the living room, and up the stairs to the scary, thrilling locked rooms above.

     M
ONA KNOCKED THE
dust off her pants and removed her straw sun hat. As she hung it on the peg inside the kitchen door, she saw that Solomon was not preparing lunch as he was supposed to be. In fact, there was no evidence, other than the tray of warm treacle buns, that the houseboy had attended to his usual morning chores. Mona was not surprised. Ever since the election of Jomo Kenyatta to the office of prime minister, back in June, old Solomon had become less and less faithful to his duties.

     But it was not only Solomon, Mona knew. A rare disease had infected all of Kenya's native population; it was the illness of arrogance and greed.

     As she looked through the morning post, which consisted of notices from creditors and banks and offers to purchase Bellatu, Mona reflected upon the unfortunate pass the colony had come to.

     Although Mau Mau had been defeated back in 1956, and an end came at last to the hostilities, it was really just a Pyrrhic victory for the British. Mau Mau might have lost the battle, but it seemed now to Mona, on this terrifying eve of Kenyan independence, that they had won the war. In 1957 Africans voted for the first time and filled many seats in the legislature with their own people. Pressure then began for self-rule. Her Majesty's government drafted a plan granting a gradual turning over of the reins to the Africans, with a proposed date of final independence some twenty years down the line. But subsequent events conspired to force Whitehall into making an abrupt reversal of that decision, much to the shock and chagrin of the white settlers, who felt that they had been betrayed and "sold out."

     First, a savage civil war in the Belgian Congo in 1960 had sent whites fleeing by car and train. Many had poured into Kenya, panicking the settlers with the prospect of such a rebellion spreading across Africa. It was then, three years ago, that the Kenya whites had begun their sad exodus.

     Next had come Jomo Kenyatta's unexpected release from prison, an event which London had promised
would never happen.
But the problem was, hostilities were starting to break out in Kenya again, and there was a Mau Mau feeling in the air. Her Majesty's government regretfully informed
the settlers that there would be no backup with British military forces a second time, that it was best just to let the colony go.

     And so the "devil," as he had been called, the "leader unto death and darkness," was suddenly a free man and an extremely popular one. African voters immediately put Jomo Kenyatta, who had become a symbol of
uhuru
, at the head of KANU, the new, powerful African political party. And upon his declaration that Kenya would soon be racially integrated—in schools, hotels, and restaurants—the exodus of whites was stepped up.

     Further outbreaks of Mau Mau-like activities, plus increasing pressure from the African delegation that attended the Lancaster House conference, finally squeezed Her Majesty's government into reversing its policy of a multiracial constitution in Kenya, granting instead an African majority based on a one-man, one-vote system. The result was, in the last elections, to place Jomo Kenyatta at the head of the coalition government as Kenya's first prime minister.

     Under such rule most whites refused to exist.

     "Pardon me, Mrs. Treverton."

     Mona looked up to see Mrs. Waddell, the governess, come in. Her round face was flushed, and she panted as if she had walked a distance. "She's gone off again," the woman said, referring to the ethereal, free-spirited Deborah.

     Mona put the mail down and got up to make tea. This was how it was in the "new Kenya": houseboys demanding more pay for less work and quitting in the middle of the day when they felt like it, leaving their employers to make tea. Now that Jomo Kenyatta was in the prime minister's seat, Solomon and many like him had undergone strange personality changes. Solomon no longer took orders from Mona and frequently disregarded his duties on a whim. "In two months we're going to be equals, memsaab," he had said when he had turned in his long white kanzu and red vest. "You will be providing me with trousers from now on." No doubt he had gone into Nyeri this morning for a beer drink. Such was the state of Kenya today.