The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (37 page)

I did not tell Njoroge about my assignment from my boss Nderi, even though we became very close in those months. I was leading a carefully orchestrated double life, only for the good of the nation, I had been assured. There was perhaps some truth in this. Occasionally after work we met at the bar of the Nairobi Theatre, across from the Norfolk, and sat on the terrace. This was where, I suppose, student and faculty dissenters from the university down the road also met. Njoroge had become a cautious admirer of Okello Okello and more recently of the member of parliament J.M. Kariuki, a fellow Kikuyu from Nakuru. Influenced by these politicians, Njoroge too was beginning to believe that the freedom movement and the Mau Mau had been betrayed—that ours had become a country of ten millionaires and ten million paupers, as J.M. himself had loudly proclaimed, and those who had collaborated with the colonial police were now in all the high posts and had taken for themselves the best land and opportunities.

We spoke of our childhood days in Nakuru and I apprised him of the recent developments in the town. We had a chance to analyze our strange friendships, among an English boy and girl, an Asian boy and girl, and an African boy, grandson of a gardener suspected of being a Mau Mau by the police. I told him about Mahesh Uncle—how I had seen him with my
father’s stolen pistol at the sawmill and then later riding off on horseback with supplies for the forest fighters; how I thought him responsible for our servant Amini’s fate and Mwangi’s arrest and death.

I have never believed Mwangi was a party to that murderous attack on the Bruces, I told him.

He waited a moment, then said: You know he gave Mau Mau oaths.

I was silent, uncomfortable, my heart thudding inside me. Why did he tell me this? I did not want to hear doubts cast upon old Mwangi: my faith in him, his look, his touch, his gentle voice, was absolute.

But giving oaths…that didn’t make you a murderer, I said desperately.

Njoroge sat watching me, then he went on slowly, in an even voice:

Some Mau Mau used to put the body parts of their enemies into the stew they used for their oathing ceremonies. That’s what I heard from a few of the old men I came to meet. I don’t know whether to believe that or not—I understand it, as a binding ritual, and yet I don’t…It’s not the kind of thing we like to talk about. The truth scares us…instead of simply acknowledging us as a part of the cycle of human good and evil. I’ve tried hard to understand Mwangi, and through him, myself. What was he like, my grandfather?

He watched me awhile, musing, then added, Don’t worry, Mzee Mwangi was no murderer. I lived with him, I knew him. I knew everything he did…You know they used to torture their suspects—Lieutenant Soames and his men, especially that Corporal Boniface? They would tie fishing lines around the testicles of their suspects and pull, one man on either side of the victim. My grandfather’s battered body was buried in the police compound. I’ve heard it said that the testicles were missing.

That night I went home and cried. I didn’t know why the tears streamed down my face, uncontrollably, in the darkness
of my room. Papa was watching
Bonanza
in the living room, Mother listening to Indian music on a tape recorder. I suppose it was because I felt my childhood’s years to have been so blighted, in a way I could not fathom. And that evening, with the memories dredged up, the cold carapace of my composure cracked and the tears leaked out in streams.

I don’t intend to be sentimental.

The next time I saw Njoroge he gave me a brown government envelope, stiff with the contents inside.

They were in the court records, Vic. You know the British destroyed many police records before they left. But these—they are the only extant photographs of that attack on the Bruce house—they were in the high court archives. Two servants were brought to trial for the murders, but the case was later withdrawn. These pictures are gruesome, I advise you. But they are for you to destroy and lay to rest. Burn them in the Hindu fashion. They were your friends, Annie and Bill, let’s face it—more than they were mine.

Gentle taunt; echo of a sentiment long harboured. And I the guilty one in the middle, the perilous in-between.

Paul Nderi did not soil his hands handling dollars after that day he passed me the attaché case full of them. He said the party’s well-wishers preferred to send their donations via two Americans who worked in Nairobi, and I was to be the intermediary. They were Jim Perkins and Gerald Cornwall and I met them for the first time one day in a booth of a steakhouse. They were friendly and informal, as Americans tend to be, one lanky and the other somewhat muscular and squat. It amused me that they were always together whenever we met thereafter, perhaps due to a rule in procedure. Each attaché case they gave me contained two hundred thousand dollars. I wondered naturally who these benefactors were who sent so much money to the country, and—as I would not do now—how Narandas Hansraj, dealer in tourist gewgaws, could so easily muster the equivalent sum in shillings.

One day the two Americans told me there were ten thousand dollars extra in the briefcase. Let’s face it, said Jim, the job is risky even if it is above board—these are what we call campaign funds, all politicians need them. They are the grease that smoothes the democratic process. Now as our token of gratitude we would like you to keep the extra ten thousand.

I refused, saying I was only the minister’s minion.

In the future I would know better, for that ten thousand surely didn’t end up in a worthier pocket.

TWENTY-FOUR.

If I say I married out of boredom, I would not be far off the mark. This is not to devalue the marriage, nor to say I never loved her, in a manner, and she, me; there was never passion in it, true—since when is that required of arranged matrimony, anyway? An arranged marriage is an alliance, a prudent exchange of duty and understanding and care that leads to the growth of mutual affection and even a restrained species of that thing called love. It is comfortable, not extravagant, and consequently less painful. It was perfect for me, at a time when a sense of listlessness hung over me cumuluslike in its oppressive weight. And so I became husband and lord of the manor, which meant I looked after its material well-being. In return, I was looked after from my morning wake-up tea to the steaming buttery chappati straight from the tawa to my plate at mealtimes, to the nightly glass of milk and the pressed
pyjamas on my bed; when I had a stubborn headache I could look forward to the pain deftly stroked out with medicinal oils, and when my feet and legs ached they too received ministrations from her small, dark, soft and cool hands.

And yet she was a highly educated woman.

The offer of marriage had come from her family of jewellers, called the Javeris, through our friends the Sharmas. Deepa was delighted at the prospect of seeing me finally settled. Without forewarning me about the offer, she took me to the jewellery shop on Kenyatta Avenue on a pretext, on a Saturday morning. Past the unfriendly, steel-reinforced glass double-doors unlocked from the inside by a switch, and the uniformed guard on duty, we were attended to by a young woman with a husky melodious voice smooth as silk; she was petite and dark, had large, deep, deliquescent black eyes. She offered us masala tea with burfi, and an assortment of diamond-studded gold jewellery sets was displayed before us on a counter. My sister, in the manner of the bourgeois wife she had become, bargained and haggled but bought nothing. And in the manner of the skilled saleswoman, the young woman at the counter did not attempt to pressure her, but remained friendly and charming throughout.

As we left the shop, a revelation hit me:

How did she know my name? She called me Mr. Lall.

Deepa gave a devilish smile, said, You are not unknown, you know, Bhaiya, and she giggled delightedly, took my arm, and guided me to a coffee shop nearby where Mother and Meena Auntie awaited us, picking anxiously at the cheese pies before them.

They asked me if I liked the girl in the jewellery store, a proposal having come from her family that the two of us were well suited to get married. Neither of us had been aware of the proposal in the store, though I recalled two men and a woman in sari taking peeps at us from an inside doorway.

England-educated, Meena Auntie said. Cambridge University, isn’t that so?

Deepa agreed. Very smart girl, Bhaiya, and she likes you too, I think. I saw you staring at her. The only hitch is she is Gujarati—but you’re fluent in Gujarati, aren’t you—kem che, and all that—after your Dar es Salaam experience?

She was enjoying herself. Nothing else in an Indian woman’s life quite approaches the sheer ecstasy of arranging a brother’s wedding. She turns into a child again. Many a young man has gone the marriage route through the happy wiles of an enthusiastic, busybody sister. Deepa was of course not a little envious at the freedom I still enjoyed, but she was also concerned about me, especially after my aborted affair with Sophia.

But what’s her name? I asked my sister.

Shobha Devi, she answered, unable to hide the tremor in her voice. Call her Shobha and may she be a shobha in your home!

There was a wistful, almost resigned smile on Mother’s face, as she watched me for my response. She had already, in my absence, expressed reservations about the match. She would have preferred a Punjabi girl—there’s no dearth of good girls in Punjab, is there, she had said. And she thought the Javeris, who were from Mombasa, were somewhat compromised castewise (this was according to a rumour) and the girl in addition was a bit too dark.

Deepa watched her impatiently and blurted out, What’s the matter now, Mama? Do you want an Italian or Seychellois daughter-in-law? Because that’s precisely what you’ll get if you go on being picky—some Sophia or Gina Lollobrigida or—

Meena Auntie put it succinctly: Better an Indian and respectable Hindu in hand—

—than a Punjabi in the bush somewhere in India, Deepa completed.

I agreed to meet the girl. I saw her over coffee the very next day and we spoke about our lives and our aspirations. At some point in the future, she said, she wanted to return
abroad and do her graduate studies, but for now she wanted to be in Nairobi. She had come with two other young women, one of whom was her sister, and they sat at a table away from us, conversing and looking up to watch us furtively. I was surprised and charmed at this bit of chaperoning. I liked Shobha and I didn’t find her very traditional. In this I turned out to be badly mistaken. We parted and informed our familes that we liked each other. Our families met. Finally, a few days after our first meeting, I took Shobha out to dinner with Deepa and Dilip. At the end of that dinner, which was very pleasant and turned more intimate as the evening progressed, Dilip asked the two of us, So can we assume that you two are agreed…er…to a union? We all laughed and Shobha and I looked at each other and said, Yes.

When I told Papa the news later that night—he had waited up for me and greeted me as I entered the house—Papa looked me squarely in the eye and asked, Are you sure, Vic? You’re not letting the ladies push you into this?

No, Papa, I told him. I think it’s time to get married. And the girl is good.

He nodded with relief and a far-off look. Mother came on the scene, dishevelled from sleep, and upon hearing the news pressed her knuckles against my head and cried with happiness, her reservations all gone.

Is that all it took to get married? Yes, barring a few details like the horoscopes, which were found to be compatible, and some negotiations about what the bride would be bringing to the new home. The wedding was well publicized, a photo of my bride and me appearing in one of the Sunday papers in its nuptials page. The bride’s sari, it noted, was a brilliant red threaded with gold, and her jewellery shone like the sun, as befitted a jeweller’s daughter. The best man was Dilip, who gave a suitably sophisticated speech on my behalf, in the right accent. The reception was at the Nairobi Club, where prominent Indians delighted in rubbing shoulders with the few of the ruling elite who were known to me and were present. I was
touted as a new rising star in the Nairobi firmament, and my in-laws were proud of me.

The Javeris were a large extended family who had branched out across five continents, in the true and caricatured Indian banya fashion, in order to minimize risk to the family’s assets. Thus my wife was a British citizen. In Nairobi the family consisted of old Bhimji Javeri and his wife, and their three sons and two daughters, all with their own families. Shobha was the daughter of the eldest son; she had two brothers and a sister.

I enjoyed their company and they treated me royally, as a son-in-law. They were simple and unpretentious folk who had amassed their wealth only recently, and their interests were rather limited. The talk at their home was money in all its facets, and every adult and most children among them understood the vicissitudes of the daily gold price, the value of the pound sterling and the dollar, and of the Tanzania and Uganda shillings. For my dowry I received a gold ingot, which remained in their safekeeping until I had a reliable safe of my own. On Sundays after the family meal at Bhimji-dada’s house, the men all liked to disrobe into pyjamas or dhotis before napping with their wives, then later would get together in the living room to watch wrestling programs from England, while chewing paan, drinking tea, and smoking cigarettes. The family was so extended, with uncles and aunts and cousins, I sometimes forgot whose wife was who, and the noisy and boisterous children seemed only to have proliferated since the previous time I took note of them.