A Grain of Wheat

  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.

  Mugo

  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.’

  In the evening she went back and found no light in Mugo’s hut. She groped her way in the dark, and then, frightened, called out: ‘Mugo.’ There was no answer. ‘Where has he gone? Where has everybody gone?’ She looked about her, retreating to the door. She wanted a witness, any witness, to contradict the answers that stormed into her – like innumerable echoes shouting back her words and fears, in the dark. She opened the door, more frightened, and ran all the way, through the drizzle, across slithering paths, to her parents’ home.

  Though not conscious of the fact, Mumbi had re-enacted the same movement as on the night she went away from Mugo. Only then there had been light in the hut and Mugo was able to see what he translated as scorn and horror on her face. He remained standing, staring long at the seat she had just left. Later he shut the door, put out the light and went to bed. He lay on the bed, aware that he had just lost something. Many times, the scorn on Mumbi’s face flashed through the dark, and a shuddering he could not control thrilled into him. Why was it important to him now, tonight, what Mumbi thought of him? She had been so near. He could see her face and feel her warm breath. She had sat there, and talked to him and given him a glimpse of a new earth. She had trusted him, and confided in him. This simple trust had forced him to tell her the truth. She had recoiled from him. He had lost her trust, for ever. To her now, so he reasoned, saw and felt, he was vile and dirty.

  And then suddenly he heard the village people around his hut singing Uhuru songs. Every word of praise carried for him a piercing irony. What had he done for the village? What had he done for anybody? Yet now he saw this undeserved trust in a new light, as the sweetest thing in the world. Mumbi will tell them, he thought. He saw the scorn and horror, not on Mumbi’s face alone, but on every person in the village. The picture, vivid in his mind, made him coil with dread.

  That night, he hardly closed his eyes. The picture of Mumbi merged with that of the village and detention camps. He would look at Mumbi and she would immediately change into his aunt or the old woman.

  He woke up early and strangely felt calm. He remained calm. He remained calm all the morning. The torturing images of the night before had gone. This surprised him; why could he feel calm when he knew what he was going to do?

  Nevertheless, when the moment came, and he saw the big crowd, doubts destroyed his calm. He found General R. speaking, and this reminded him of Karanja. Why should I not let Karanja bear the blame? He dismissed the temptation and stood up. How else could he ever look Mumbi in the face? His heart pounded against him, he felt sweat in his hands, as he walked through the huge crowd. His hands shook, his legs were not firm on the ground. In his mind, everything was clear and final. He would stand there and publicly own the crime. He held on to this vision. Nothing, not even the shouting and the songs and the praises would deflect him from this purpose. It was the clarity of this vision which gave him courage as he stood before the microphone and the sudden silence. As soon as the first words were out, Mugo felt light. A load of many years was lifted from his shoulders. He was free, sure, confident.

  O
nly for a minute.

  No sooner had he finished speaking than the silence around, the lightness within, and the sudden freedom pressed heavy on him. His vision became blurred at the edges. Panic seized him, as he descended the platform, moved through the people, who were now silent. He was conscious of himself, of every step he made, of the images that rushed and whirled through his mind with only one constant thread: so he was responsible for whatever he had done in the past, for whatever he would do in the future. The consciousness frightened him. Nothing would now, this minute, make him return to that place. Suppose all those people had risen and dug their nails and teeth into his body?

  In his mind, this thought turned into fact. He did not enter his hut. He heard Githua’s laughter and felt himself pursued. He did not want to die, he wanted to live. Mumbi had made him aware of a loss which was also a possibility. He lingered outside his hut and peered around him, into the village, at Kabui Trading Centre and the road which went beyond. Would people rise and come for him? He saw the clouds gather in the sky. Maybe he ought to run away from the village before rain fell. He started walking towards the road. He went for a few yards and then thought he might meet with people coming from Rung’ei. He would go the other way, through the village, and join the other road to Nairobi. There, he would start a new life.

  Strong in this resolution, he hurried along the main village street, which he had always taken on the way to the shamba. But already people from the meeting had started to stream into the village. The streets and the huts would soon be alive with people and he would not get away. He quickened his step. Now he faced the hut that belonged to the old woman. A thrill burnt him. He felt an uncontrollable desire to enter the hut, to see the old woman, this once, for the last time. But he decided to go on before the rain and the darkness fell.

  The first few drops of rain, however, caught him before he had moved more than a few steps. He’d better take shelter from the rain, he thought. If the old woman was in, couldn’t she, in any case, hide him until the hour of dark when he could get away secretly? He retraced the steps, crossed the street, and suppressing a high voice that urged him to go away immediately, entered the hut. The old woman sat near the empty fireplace, her feet buried in the ashes. At his entrance, she raised her head slowly. Her eyes in the darkish hut had a strange glint.