Green City in the Sun (51 page)

     "Mario?" she called.

     There was no reply.

     She entered the solid tranquility of her spacious and stately living room. "Mario?" she called again. The house was silent.

     She went into the kitchen and found that the kettle hadn't even been put on the stove. She filled it and placed it over the heat, then went back into the living room, where, on a large, ornate desk that overlooked her rear garden, the morning's mail lay.

     Wondering where Mario, who was as reliable as the sunrise, could be, Grace went through the envelopes.

     In the past eight years James Donald had gotten into the habit of writing to Grace at least once a month, but his latest letter was long overdue. And there wasn't one in this morning's delivery.

     Grace was pleasantly surprised, however, to find a royalty check from her publisher in London with a letter suggesting that considering the medical and scientific progress these days, Grace think about writing a revised edition of her manual.

     The morning's mail revealed another piece of good news: A letter from the bank informed her that the yearly anonymous deposit into her account, which had not been increased in several years, had just been doubled. The Donald farm, under Geoffrey's keen administration, she decided, must be doing well.

     Setting the rest down on the desk next to her journal, Grace called out a third time. But Mario wasn't in the house.

     Returning to the kitchen to make tea, Grace saw on the table a newspaper, the latest edition of the
East African Standard
, which had been delivered only this morning and which she had not yet read. When she saw the headline on the front page, she put the teapot down and picked up the paper.

     "Oh, my God," she murmured. Then, thinking of Mona, Grace folded the paper and hurried out.

     SHE ENTERED THE big house by the back door and was surprised to find the kitchen deserted, the stove cold. In the imposing dining room the old grandfather clock ticked faithfully in the oppressive quiet. The living room stood in dark, somber tones; the heads of impalas and buffalo looked down on sofas and chairs that had not seen occupants in weeks. Polished surfaces and gleaming silver were the only evidence that the presence of a human, with broom and cloth, ever passed through here.

     Grace paused to listen. Bellatu was as silent and unwelcoming as a mausoleum. She knew that Valentine, overwhelmed with grief over the death of his son, was in Tanganyika hunting lion and that Rose was dealing with her
bereavement in the only way she knew how—in the cloister of her eucalyptus glade. But where was Mona?

     She heard a sound. Turning, Grace found that the living room was not deserted after all. Geoffrey Donald rose from the leather sofa and said, "Hello, Aunt Grace. I hope I didn't startle you."

     "Where are the servants?"

     He shrugged. "I have no idea. No one answered the door when I knocked. I let myself in."

     "Where's Mona?"

     "Upstairs. I saw her at the window. She won't come down and talk to me."

     "Have you seen this?" Grace handed him the newspaper.

     Geoffrey's eyebrows arched. "I say! That's good news, isn't it?"

     "I'm hoping Mona will find it so. Perhaps it will bring her some peace of mind. I'll go up and see her, Geoff. Why don't you put the kettle on and I'll bring her down for tea?"

     WHEN THE DEAD
are forgotten, they have died twice.

     Where had she read that? Mona couldn't remember. It didn't matter, though; it was true all the same. And that was why she was never going to forget her brother.

     Mona was sitting in the window seat of Arthur's bedroom, looking out over the vast acres of coffee toward distant Mount Kenya. In her lap lay the poem written by Tim Hopkins which he had given to her on the morning of the parade and which she had never had a chance to pass on to her brother. She had read it so many times that she had memorized it.

     "Mona?" said Grace in the doorway. She came all the way in, shivering and wondering how her niece could stand the chill in the room. As she drew near, Grace studied Mona in concern. The girl had inherited her father's dark good looks, but she had grown pale these past weeks. The Kenya tan common to British settlers had faded to a disturbing whiteness that heightened the blackness of her eyes and hair. She had lost weight; her dress hung on her.

     "Mona?" Grace said, sitting opposite her niece in the large window seat. "Geoffrey's downstairs. Why won't you see him?"

     But Mona didn't reply.

     Grace sighed. She knew that Mona's grief lay enmeshed in a complex web of guilts and punishments. Mona blamed herself for her brother's death because, as she had said, if she had not insisted he be the one to cut the ribbon, he would have been safely seated in the grandstand at the time of the incident. She also blamed Geoffrey Donald, who, Mona had hotly declared, was "doing nothing" while her brother was being murdered. Valentine was also guilty for not having handled the African protest better and for allowing David Mathenge to escape; even Lady Rose, in Mona's convoluted thinking, was culpable insofar as she had never been a good mother to Arthur.

     Finally, Mona blamed David Mathenge for her brother's death.

     Grace showed her the newspaper.

     "He's innocent after all," Grace said while Mona read. "This other boy, Matthew Munoro, has turned himself into the police and has confessed to stabbing Arthur. It wasn't David after all."

     Mona took a long time reading it; then Grace realized that she wasn't reading at all but was simply staring down at the page.

     "Apparently," Grace explained quietly, "there has been a lot of pressure within the tribe for the real killer to come forward and exonerate David. They want Wachera's son to be allowed to come out of hiding, but he won't as long as he is wanted by the police for murder. They say that Chief Muchina has fallen under a
thahu
and is terribly ill. I would imagine that this boy Matthew decided he would rather face the white man's justice than risk Wachera's
thahu."

     Mona looked away, her eyes settling on the sea of green coffee trees reaching to the foothills. "David Mathenge is still guilty," she said softly.

     "But you yourself told the police you hadn't witnessed the actual stabbing. And the only other person at the scene was Tim, who was unconscious and admitted he didn't witness anything. Mona, this boy has confessed."

     "David Mathenge"—Mona's voice continued softly—"is guilty of my brother's death because it was
his
jailbreak that got Arthur killed. Maybe he didn't plunge the dagger into my brother's back, but he's guilty of his
murder all the same. And someday David Mathenge is going to pay."

     Grace sat back. The whole nightmarish affair had torn the Treverton family apart. Here was Mona, plunged into a morass of grief and self-blame; Valentine had run away to vent his anger and helpless rage on the Serengeti Plains; and Rose had made herself just a little more invisible among her precious trees, her only companion, ironically, Njeri, David's half sister.

     "Mona, please come downstairs and talk to Geoffrey."

     "I don't wish to see him."

     "What will you do then? Never see anyone again as long as you live? This grief will pass. I promise you. You're only eighteen. You have your whole future ahead of you—marriage, children."

     "I don't want marriage or children."

     "You can't say that now, Mona, dear. There is so much time ahead of you. Things change. If you don't marry, what sort of life would you have?"

     "You never married."

     Grace stared at her niece.

     Then Mona said, with tears rising in her eyes, "Have you ever been in love, Aunt Grace?"

     "I was once ... a long time ago."

     "Why didn't you marry him?"

     "We ... couldn't. We weren't free."

     "I'll tell you why I asked, Aunt Grace. It's because I know now that I am incapable of love. I have spent many hours sitting here and thinking. And I've come to realize that Arthur and I were different from other people. I can see now that I'm just like my mother, that I was born incapable of feeling love. She never had any love for Arthur, I know that now. She has never loved either of us. When I try to picture my mother, I can't
see
her, Aunt Grace." Mona's tears fell. "She's just a shadow. She's an incomplete woman. Just like her, I'll never be able to love anyone, and now that Arthur's dead, I'll be all alone in life."

     When Mona started to cry, memories came rushing into Grace's mind: the terrifying February night eighteen years ago when she delivered an unbreathing baby in a train car; Mona's first laughter, her first steps; the monkeylike creature that had come flying out of the Cadillac, crying, "Auntie
Grace! We're home, and I never have to go to England again!" Grace suddenly felt every single day of her forty-seven years.

     "Mona, listen to me," she said, taking the girl's hands into hers. "The dagger that fell that day is still falling. It is stabbing all the life and love out of you. Don't let it kill you, too, Mona. Get out of this room. Close it up and say farewell to the ghost that lives here. You belong to the land of the living. Arthur would want it that way. And there
will
be someone in your life whom you can love, I promise you that."

     Mona dried her eyes with the back of her hand. Her dark, slate eyes became bleak; her voice was full of loneliness. "I know what lies ahead of me, Aunt Grace. Now that my brother is dead, I am the heir to Bellatu. All this will be mine someday, and I am going to make this plantation my life. I am going to learn how to run it, how to grow coffee, and how to be independent. The only master I shall ever have will be Bellatu. It will be the only thing I will ever love."

     There was a light in Mona's eyes that suddenly reminded Grace of another memory, also from eighteen years ago. She and Valentine were standing on this very spot, on a barren hill where the house would someday go, and she was listening to him talk about the plans he had for this wilderness. Grace had heard the conviction in his voice when he had talked about possessing this land; she had seen a strange illumination in his dark eyes as he had described his vision of the future. And Grace suddenly realized that she was witnessing it all over again—in his daughter.

     "It will be a lonely existence, Mona," she said sadly. "Just you, all alone in this big house."

     "I will not be lonely, Aunt Grace, because I will be very busy."

     "With nothing to live for except coffee trees?"

     "I shall have something to live for."

     "And what is that?"

     "To see that David Mathenge pays for his crime."

     "Mona," Grace whispered, "let it be. Lay your grief to rest. Revenge never succored anyone!"

     "He'll come back here someday. He'll come out of hiding, from wherever he is, and he'll come back here. And when he does, I will see to
it that David Mathenge pays for my brother's murder."

     A door slammed downstairs. Footsteps thumped through the house. Finally, Mario's voice rang down the hallway. "Memsaab Daktari!"

     "Good gracious," said Grace, getting to her feet. "I'm in here, Mario."

     He burst in. "Memsaab! In the forest! You must come."

     "What is it?"

     "An initiation, memsaab! A big one! Very secret!"

     "Where? Initiation for whom?"

     "In the mountains. Over there. For
girls
, memsaab."

     Grace suddenly understood the odd behavior of her nurses, the absence of the Bellatu staff, the mission compound strangely quiet. They had been amassing for a huge secret initiation, the first in years. It was the forbidden ceremony of female circumcision—the clitoridectomy—the operation that had killed Mario's sister.

     "Memsaab," he said, "the girl Njeri Mathenge—"

     Grace flew past him and down the hall.

     Mona remained in the window seat, listening to their footsteps fade. She looked out and saw Grace and her houseboy hurry across the lawn to the path that led down to the mission.