Petals of Blood (59 page)

‘And where are the children?’ he asked. They looked embarrassed. Munira frowned in anger. He snorted: ‘You don’t want them to see their father, a failure, eeh?’ And suddenly his mother broke down.

‘Why did you do it? How could you do such a thing?’ she asked.

She had broken the taboo of silence on the subject. Rev. Jerrod chimed in:

‘And to know you were here all the time and I didn’t . . . I might have helped.’

Munira more than ever before was struck by the hypocritical stances around him. He recalled the forthrightness of Inspector Godfrey, who at least was clear as to what laws he was serving, and he felt kindly toward the detective and his eccentric ways of investigating crimes.

‘Return to the path . . . turn to the Light . . .’ Munira intoned, standing above them, suddenly filled with pity and anger at the same time. The others looked at one another, except Waweru, who stood apart and seemed far away in his own past.

‘You, my father—’ Munira called with authority.

‘Yes?’

‘One question, only one question I want to ask you. Do you remember that in 1952 you refused to take the Mau Mau oath for African Land and Freedom?’

‘What has that got to do with your—’ and Waweru pulled himself up short, wondering about the new Temptations of Satan.

‘And yet in 196—, after Independence, you took an oath to divide the Kenya people and to protect the wealth in the hands of only a few. What was the difference? Was an oath not an oath? Kneel down, old man, and ask the forgiveness of Christ. In heaven, in the eyes of God, there are no poor, or rich, this or that tribe, all who have repented are equal in His eyes. You too, Reverend—’

‘What has got into his head?’ his mother cried out again, frightened.

‘You remember that once in Blue Hills you received some people from Ilmorog—’

‘I can’t quite, eeh, remember—’ he said, wondering what was to follow.

‘A cripple among them? Drought?’

‘Yes . . . aah . . . yes.’

‘I was one of them: and you sent us away thirsty and hungry.’

‘I didn’t know . . . If I had known . . . but . . .’

Munira coughed once: he cleared his throat and then dramatically pointed a finger at them:

‘The Law . . . Did you obey the Law of the one God? . . . Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. Then they also will answer, Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee? Then will he answer them: Truly I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me. And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

They went away weeping for him. At the Ilmorog Anglican Church they knelt down and all of them said prayers for Munira.

‘It is these revivalist cults that claim to speak in tongues and to work miracles. Going too far . . . They must be banned . . .’ said Rev. Jerrod, sadly.

‘Yes . . .’ agreed Munira’s father. But he was thinking about Karega and Mariamu and how it was the woman who had, through her sons, hit twice at him. Maybe . . . it was his sin of attempted adultery . . . weaknesses of the flesh . . . But how could this be, seeing that he had not quite . . . and in any case he had repented? Then he recalled a recent coincidence. Kajohi, who had sold him all of the Kagunda Mbari land in the 1920s and disappeared into the Rift Valley, had now come back, an old man half blind, to ask for assistance. Mr Ezekiel Waweru had, through his contacts and friends, found him a place at an almshouse run by the church in the city . . . God works in
mysterious ways his wonders to perform, Ezekiel muttered. He would know now how to write his will . . . how could he then question God’s wisdom?

5 ~ Karega received the news and his face did not move. But despite attempts to control and contain himself, a teardrop flowed down his left cheek. He watched the drop fall to the cement floor. He was weak in body because of the early beatings, the electric shocks and the mental harassment. These, he could bear. But to hear that his mother was dead – dead! That he would never see her again . . . that he had never really done anything for her . . . that she had remained a landless squatter all her life: on European farms, on Munira’s father’s fields, and latterly a landless rural worker for anybody who would give her something with which to hold the skin together! ‘Why? Why?’ he moaned inside. ‘I have failed,’ and he felt another teardrop fall to the cement floor. Then suddenly he hit the cell wall in a futile gesture of protest. What of all the Mariamus of Kenya, of neo-colonial Africa? What of all the women and men and children still weighed down by imperialism? And for two days he would not eat anything.

On the third day the warder who had broken the bad news came again.

‘Mr Karega . . . there’s a visitor to see you . . . you had better come out . . . Mr Karega, I . . . we want you to know that despite what has happened . . . some of us are glad to know of your struggle for us workers . . . we feel with you . . . only that we endure because we must eat . . .’

For us workers – Karega repeated in his heart. His mother had worked all her life breaking the skin of the earth for a propertied few: what difference did it make if they were black or brown? Their capacity to drink the blood and sweat of the many was not diminished by any thoughts of kinship of skin or language or region! Although she insisted on her immediate rights, she never complained much, believing that maybe God would later put everything right. But she had now died without God putting anything right. She had got no more than what she had struggled for and fought for. Could Wanja have been right: eat or you are eaten?

He saw the girl from a distance and wondered who she was. As he approached the barbed wire, her face seemed vaguely familiar. Then he remembered that he had seen her at the factory: she looked after the seed millet for making Theng’eta – she spread it out to the sun to dry, and things like that. She looked shy and she spoke in Swahili.

‘I have been sent to you. I have been begging to be allowed to see you. This warder helped me.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Akinyi. They sent me—’

‘Who?’

‘The other workers . . . with a message. They are with you . . . and they are . . . 
we
are planning another strike and a march through Ilmorog.’

‘But who—?’

‘The movement of Ilmorog workers . . . not just the union of workers at the breweries. All workers in Ilmorog and the unemployed will join us. And the small farmers . . . and even some small traders . . .’

He stood still . . . so still. The movement of workers . . . it must be something new . . . something which must have started since he was held.

She told him more about the workers’ protest and rebellion on the Sunday he was arrested and also about the condition of the workers wounded then. She told him about the death of a very important person in authority . . .

‘Really?’ he asked.

‘Yes. In Nairobi. He was gunned down as he waited in his car in Eastleigh, outside Mathere Valley. He was waiting for his chauffeurbodyguard to bring him the rent . . .’

‘He profiteered on the misery of the poor. It was probably robbers who did it, but all the same—’

‘Not robbers. According to Ruma Monga it’s more than that. They left a note. They called themselves Wakombozi – or the society of one world liberation . . . and they say it’s Stanley Mathenge returned from Ethiopia to complete the war he and Kimathi started . . . 
There are rumours about a return to the forests and the mountains . . .’

Mathenge back? He turned this over in his mind. It could not be possible. But what did it matter? New Mathenges . . . new Koitalels . . . new Kimathis . . . new Piny Owachos . . . these were born every day among the people . . .

‘What are they going to do to you?’ she said, interrupting his thought-flow.

‘Detain me . . . I amsuspected of being a communist at heart.’

‘You’ll come back,’ she suddenly said, looking up at him boldly.

Her voice only agitated further images set in motion by her revelation. Imperialism: capitalism: landlords: earthworms. A system that bred hordes of round-bellied jiggers and bedbugs with parasitism and cannibalism as the highest goal in society. This system and its profiteering gods and its ministering angels had hounded his mother to her grave. These parasites would always demand the sacrifice of blood from the working masses. These few who had prostituted the whole land turning it over to foreigners for thorough exploitation, would drink people’s blood and say hypocritical prayers of devotion to skin oneness and to nationalism even as skeletons of bones walked to lonely graves. The system and its gods and its angels had to be fought consciously, consistently and resolutely by all the working people! From Koitalel through Kang’ethe to Kimathi it had been the peasants, aided by the workers, small traders and small landowners, who had mapped out the path. Tomorrow it would be the workers and the peasants leading the struggle and seizing power to overturn the system of all its preying bloodthirsty gods and gnomic angels, bringing to an end the reign of the few over the many and the era of drinking blood and feasting on human flesh. Then, only then, would the kingdom of man and woman really begin, they joying and loving in creative labour . . . For a minute he was so carried on the waves of this vision and of the possibilities it opened up for all the Kenyan working and peasant masses that he forgot the woman beside him.

‘You’ll come back,’ she said again in a quiet affirmation of faith in eventual triumph.

He looked hard at her, then past her to Mukami of Manguo Marshes and again back to Nyakinyua, his mother, and even beyond Akinyi to the future! And he smiled through his sorrow.

‘Tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . .’ he murmured to himself.

‘Tomorrow . . .’ and he knew he was no longer alone.

Evanston – Limuru – Yalta

October 1970–October 1975