Petals of Blood

  His father Ezekieli, tall, severe in his austere aloofness, was a wealthy landowner and a respected elder in the hierarchy of the Presbyterian Church. He was tall and mean in his austere holiness. He believed that children should be brought up on boiled maize grains sprinkled with a few beans and on tea with only tiny drops of milk and no sugar, but all crowned with words of God and prayers. He was, despite his rations, especially successful in attracting faithful labour on his farm. Two of the labourers had remained in his father’s employment ever since Munira could remember – still wearing the same type of patched up trousers and nginyira for shoes. Off and on, over the years, he had engaged many hands – some from as far as Gaki, Metumi, Gussiland – to help him in cultivating his fields, picking his pyrethrum flowers all the year round and drying them, and picking red ripe plums in December, putting them in boxes, and taking them to the Indian shops to sell. They nearly all had one thing in common: submission to the Lord. They called him Brother Ezekieli, our brother in Christ, and they would gather in the yard of the house after work for prayers and thanksgiving. There were of course some who had devilish spirits which drove them to demand higher wages and create trouble on the farm and they would be dismissed. One of them attempted to organize the workers into a branch of the Plantation Workers’ Union that operated on European farms. He argued that there was no difference between African and European employers of labour. He too was instantly dismissed. He was even denounced in a church sermon. He was given as an example of ‘the recent trials and temptations of Brother Ezekiel’. But Munira even as a boy was quick to notice that away from his father’s house, in their quarters down the farm, the workers, even as they praised the Lord, were less stilted, were more free and seemed to praise and sing to the Lord with greater conviction and more holiness. He felt a little awed by their total conviction and by their belief in a literal heaven to come. It was at one of their meetings that Munira once during his holidays from Siriana had felt a slight trembling of the heart and a consciousness of the enormity of the sin he had earlier committed, his very first, with Amina, a bad woman, at Kamiritho. He had felt the need to confess, to be cleansed by the Lord, but somehow, on the verge of saying it, he felt as if they would not believe his confession – and how anyway would he have found the words? Instead, he had gone home, convinced that inwardly he had given himself up to the Lord, and decided to do something about his sins. He stole a matchbox, collected a bit of grass and dry cowdung and built an imitation of Amina’s house at Kamiritho where he had sinned against the Lord, and burnt it. He watched the flames and he felt truly purified by fire. He went to bed at ease with himself and peaceful in his knowledge of being accepted by the Lord. Shalom. But the cowdung had retained the fire and at night the wind fanned it into flames which would have licked up the whole barn had it not been discovered in time. In the morning he heard them talking about it – saying that maybe some jealous neighbours had done it – and he decided to keep quiet. But he felt as if his father knew and this had added to his consciousness of guilt.

  One woman Munira always remembered: although she never went to church she stood out as holier than all the others and more sincere in her splendid withdrawal and isolation in her hut surrounded by five cypress trees. Her hut was exactly halfway between their big house and the other workers’ quarters. Old Mariamu had a son who used to be Munira’s playmate before he went to Siriana. And even after Munira had come back from Siriana they kept some kind of company – not much – but enough to have made Munira really shocked when in 1953 or so he heard that Mariamu’s son had been caught carrying weapons for Mau Mau and was subsequently hanged. But the main reason he remembered her was because she would protest against low pay or failure to be paid on time where others trusted his father’s word and his goodwill. She was respectful to Ezekieli but never afraid of him. Yet he never rebuked her or dismissed her. He had once heard her name mentioned in connection with his father’s missing right ear – it had been cut off by Mau Mau guerrillas – and more recently in connection with Mukami’s suicide. But he himself never forgot his childhood escapades to tea and to charcoal-roasted potatoes in Mariamu’s hut.

  Now Munira stood for a while by the cypress trees where her hut used to stand before she along with the others were moved to the new Concentration village of Kamiritho. What had happened to her? It surprised him how, in his self-isolation, nursing his failure at Siriana, he had lost touch with and interest in active life at Limuru . . . he was of it . . . and yet not of it . . . everything about his past since Siriana was so vague, unreal, a mist . . . It was as if there was a big break in the continuity of his life and of his memories. So that taking a definite decision to go to Ilmorog was like his first conscious act of breaking with this sense of non-being.

  He played with his two children, wondering for a time what image he presented to their young minds. Did he have the same austerity and holy aloofness as his own father? He told them about Ilmorog. He dwelt on the flies that massed around the eyes and noses of the shepherd boys until his wife exclaimed: ‘How can you—?’ He told them how Ilmorog was once haunted by one-eyed Marimu; funny old women shitting mountains; morose cripples with streams of curses from their foul mouths, until once again his wife exclaimed: ‘How can you—?’ without finishing the sentence. He was not being very amusing and he felt ridiculous in their unlaughing eyes. OK, I will read you something from the Bible, he told them, and his wife’s face beamed with pleasure. And Jesus told them: Go ye unto the villages and dark places of the earth and light my lamp paraffined with the holy spirit. So be it. Aamen.

  When the children had gone to bed she immediately turned to him with half-severe, half-reproachful eyes. She could have been beautiful but too much righteous living and Bible-reading and daily prayers had drained her of all sensuality and what remained now was the cold incandescence of the spirit.

  ‘You should be ashamed, blaspheming to the children. You should know that this world is not our home and we should be preparing them and ourselves for the next one.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I myself have never belonged to this world . . . even to Limuru . . . Maybe Ilmorog . . . for a change.’

  So Godfrey Munira once again galloped his metal horse into Ilmorog, and this time people actually came out to greet him. The old woman went to the school compound and said: You have indeed come back, God bless you: and she showered a bit of saliva into her hands in blessing. He shrank a little but he was glad that Nyakinyua was now not hostile.

  He resumed his teaching, now warming to their apparent acceptance of him. The listening silence of the children – those who turned up for classes – thrilled him. All Ilmorog seemed suddenly attentive to his voice.

  He became a daily feature in Ilmorog, a guardian knight of knowledge for part-time pupils. Standard II or what he called the English beginners’ class met in the morning: Standard I in the afternoon. The pupils came in and out as they liked and he took this lack of expected order, this erratic behaviour, even the talk of drought with an aloof understanding and benign indifference. It was enough for him that to the old men and women and others in Ilmorog he was the teacher of their children, the one who carried the wisdom of the new age in his head. They appreciated it that he from the other world had agreed to stay among them. They could see his readiness to stay in his eyes, which did not carry restlessness: the others had always carried wanting-to-run-away eyes and once they had the slightest complaint they always went away in a hurry and never returned. Munira stayed on. They anxiously watched him, at the end of every month, prepare to go to Ruwa-ini to fetch his salary, but they saw that he always came back, and they said amongst themselves: ‘This one will stay.’ Now they brought him eggs, occasionally a chicken, and he accepted this homage with gratitude. He strolled across the ridge following the paths scattered all over. The people would stand aside, in reverence, to let him pass and he would accept this with a slight nod or a smile. He was amused by their ndunyu which was more of a social gathering of frien
ds than a place for exchanging commodities and haggling over prices. They met on the ridge whenever the need arose on an evening before sunset. Those from the plains would bring milk and beadwork, occasionally skins, and they would buy or exchange them for snuff, beans, and maize. One could more or less do without hard cash except when one went to Abdulla’s shop or to Ruwa-ini. Money or food or an item of clothing: any of these would do as a basis of exchange. Money anyway was saved only to buy other articles for use. Once he saw one or two spears and knives being sold and he was surprised to learn that it was the work of Muturi. ‘But he can only make them at Mwathi’s place,’ Nyakinyua confided in him, ‘for in beating and bending iron with bellows and hammer, he must be protected from the power of evil and envious eyes.’ And he came to know that Mwathi wa Mugo was the spiritual power over both Ilmorog ridge and Ilmorog plains, somehow, invisibly, regulating their lives. He it was who advised on the best day for planting seeds or the appropriate day for the herdsmen to move. Munira had never seen him: nobody below a certain age could see him: but he was shown his homestead hedged round with thabai, and he was grateful to know this, for in future he would avoid passing anywhere near the place. Otherwise he felt secure: to be so liked, honoured, venerated, without the mess which comes from hasty involvement in other people’s lives: this struck him as a late gift of God. He tried to forget his fears, his guilt, his frozen years: he stifled any unpleasant memories of his father or his wife or of his childhood and youth with a drink or so. He liked it especially when the herdsmen from the plains came to Abdulla’s store. They would plant their spears outside and drink and talk about cows and make jokes about those who lived like moles, digging the soil. The peasant farmers of Ilmorog, though they were worried and anxious about the lateness of the rains, would hold themselves ready to defend themselves and their calling. Then a heated debate would follow between the tillers and the herdsmen as to which was more important: animals or crops. Cattle were wealth – the only wealth. Was it not the ambition of every real man, especially before the white man came, to possess cows and goats? A man without a goat would often plant fields and fields of sweet potatoes, vines, millet or yams, sugarcane or bananas. In the end, he would try to sell these for a goat – one kid, even. And had it not been known for people to hire themselves as ndungata in the hope of one day getting a goat? People sold their daughters for goats, not for crops: smiths, workers in pottery and basketry or in beautiful trinkets would more often than not only exchange their wares for things of blood. And why did nations go to war, if not to secure these things of blood? But the others argued that goats were not wealth. Since wealth was expressed in goats and cows, the same could not be the wealth. Wealth was in the soil and the crops worked by a man’s hands. Didn’t they know the saying that wealth was sweat on one’s hands? Look at white people: they first took our land; then our youth; only later, cows and sheep. Oh no, the other side would argue: the white man first took the land, then the goats and cows, saying these were hut taxes or fines after every armed clash, and only later did he capture the youth to work on the land. The line of division was not always clear since some owned crop fields and cattle as well. These said that both were important: a person paid goats for a girl, true: but he looked for the one who was not afraid of work. And why did wealthy people keep ndungata and ahoi? Not only to look after cows and goats but also after the crops. And why did the colonial settler and his policeman capture the youth? To cultivate his fields and also to look after the cows. The foreigner from Europe was cunning: he took their land, their sweat and their wealth and told them that the coins he had brought, which could not be eaten, were the true wealth! And so the debate would go on. Munira did not take part in such talk: he felt an outsider to their involvement with both the land and what they called ‘things of blood’. Any talk about colonialism made him uneasy. He would suddenly become conscious of never having done or willed anything to happen, that he seemed doomed to roam this world, a stranger. And yet, yet, why this ready acceptance of undeserved homage, why this secret pleasure at the illusion of being of them?

  He would try to change the subject. Who was their MP? A heated exchange would follow. Some could not remember his name. They had heard of him during the last elections. He had visited the area to ask to be given votes. He had made several promises. He had even collected two shillings from each household in his constituency for a Harambee water project, and a ranching scheme. But they had hardly seen him since. Nderi wa Riera-aa, that was the name, somebody remembered. What was an MP? A new type of government agent? But why had he needed votes? Even such a talk would make Munira fidgety. He would ask yet other questions hoping for a conversation that would not make demands on him to choose this or that position in politics. Didn’t they ever get visitors from the outside? Yes, yes, they used to have teachers. But these ran away (back to the cities) just before independence. The few who later came never stayed. Also at the end of every harvest, some people, traders, would come with lorries. They bought some of the produce. Sometimes too, at the beginning of each year, the Chief, the tax gatherer and a policeman would come and they would terrorize them into paying their dues. Thus the money from the seasonal traders would end up in the hands of the tax gatherer. But this was nothing new. It had always been so, these many many past years, and the only thing that pained them was this youth running away from the land. The movement away had started after the second Big War . . . No . . . before that . . . No, it was worse after Mau Mau War . . . No, it was the railway . . . all right, all right . . . even this had always been so since European colonists came into their midst, these ghosts from another world. But they of Ilmorog . . . they now would have to find a way of avoiding those taxes . . . Politics! Couldn’t one escape from these things, Munira thought impatiently?

  He developed a working pattern: classes all day; a walk to the ridge; then a stroll to Abdulla’s place. In time, even Abdulla came to accept him and he would curse Joseph into bringing a chair for Mwalimu at the sight of Munira in the distance. Only his tone in conversation – between friendly hostility and playful contempt – sat disagreeably in Munira’s stomach as he sipped beer in this land of easeful dreams. But occasionally Abdulla would get into one of his vicious moods and would remind him of his first reception in Ilmorog. Abdulla would lean towards him and assume an intimate tone of false conspiracy:

  ‘These people – you know – too suspicious. Have you seen their anxious faces raised to the sky? I bet that if it refused to rain they would blame it on my donkey. They would even go to Mwathi’s place to ask him about the donkey. Have you ever seen this priest of theirs? Actually he has a reputation. A good reputation. But I have never seen him. A mystery, eh? Look at Muturi, Njuguna, Ruoro and even old man Njogu: they don’t like my donkey. Do you know why? They say it eats grass enough for several cows. It cannot be slaughtered. But I know they are really envious of the appetite of my donkey. It can even eat roots, you see: it can find water where no cow or goat will find any. That’s why there is that look in the eyes of these people. Have you seen the old woman’s eyes? The glint . . . evil, don’t you think? You should know. But tell me, Mwalimu: is it true that she once shat a mountain in your compound? And the children thought it was you? Ha! ha! ha! Brought all that shit from out there? Ha! ha! ha! Joseph – you lazybones – have you ever met a little nigger that was so lazy? Another beer for Mwalimu – but tell me, was it really true?’

  ‘Listen, Abdulla,’ Munira would say, trying to steer the conversation away from this delicate area, ‘now that you have brought up the question of education, why don’t you let Joseph enrol in the school?’

  ‘And bring my donkey to run errands in this shop as it does outside?’

  Excepting for such small irritations Munira had come to like Ilmorog, and now he even tended to view the other world of his wife and Mzigo and his father with suspicion and hostility. At home he hardly ever stayed more than a night, suddenly feeling his new sense of ‘being without involvement’ threat
ened by their inquiries. Mzigo’s routine questions came to acquire menacing edges in Munira’s own mind: might he not actually carry out his own promises and visit Ilmorog? Munira had worked out a routine answer: ‘That place . . . hell . . .’ and he hoped this would deter Mzigo from a visit. He did not want anyone to interfere with his teaching rhythm, and with his world. Sometimes he made them sing nonsense songs like: Mburi ni indo; ngombe ni indo, mbeca ni indo; ngai muheani. Sometimes he would give the children addition or subtraction sums and go out into the sun.

  He would watch the peasants in the fields going through motions of working but really waiting for the rains, and he would vaguely feel with them in their anxieties over the weather. But the sun was nice and warm on his skin and he would suddenly be filled with a largeness of heart that embraced all Ilmorog, men, women, children, the land, everything. His home and its problems were far, far away!

  At the beginning of April it started raining. The eyes of the elders beamed with expectation of new life over Ilmorog: their wrinkled faces seemed to stretch and tighten with sinews of energy. Everybody was busy about the fields. Muturi, Njuguna, Ruoro, Njogu: even these, for a time, would not come by Abdulla’s shop for they were tired out after the day’s involvement with planting or walking their cows and goats in muddy fields. Time was when men did no planting except for things like yams, sugarcane and bananas, but times were changing, and the elders had been unable to prevent the youth from going away. So during the period of planting, Munira drank alone or with only Abdulla and Joseph for company. He now missed their idle gossip, their anecdotes, and even their comments and debates on unsettling issues.