Green City in the Sun (62 page)

     I
T SEEMED TO
David as if the celebrating would go on all night.

     He was morose. He wished he could be as joyous as his kin all were, dancing and passing around calabashes of surgarcane beer. But they were blissfully ignorant people; they were able to be happy, whereas David, too educated and too worldly for his own good, sat in the glum shadow of reality.

     For his wounds and service to the Crown, the British had given David a medal and an early honorable discharge. But nothing more. He had returned home to find there was no employment for him, that there was no place in Kenya for, as one person had put it, an "educated nigger." Although there were African teachers in "native" schools, and African clerks in some government offices, and a growing number of Africans in private business, no one seemed to need a bright young man of twenty-seven with a college degree in farming and an ambitious look in his eye.

     A calabash of beer was put into his hands, and he drank.

     He knew Wanjiru had gone into her new hut, which he and his friends had built next to his mother's. But he couldn't face his bride just yet. He was too full of anger, too bitter to go to her in love. So he drank down all the beer and reached for more. Across the fire, around which the young people danced, David saw his mother watching him.

     David estimated that his mother was fifty-five years old. If she had stopped shaving her head, she would no doubt show gray hairs. But her face was still smooth and beautiful; her long neck was graced with row upon row of beaded necklaces. She still wore the old-fashioned dress made of soft
hides, and great loops of beads stood out on either side of her head.

     Wachera symbolized for her people the vanishing ways, a vanishing Africa. David saw his mother as a sort of sacred icon that represented the old order being erased from this land. She made his heart ache. All these lonely years! Without a husband, with no other children, living alone in a hut that had been torn down repeatedly and that she had rebuilt until the white man finally left her alone. David's mother, Wachera Mathenge, was now a legend all over Kenya because of her stand against the Europeans.

     Since his return David had spent many hours talking to his mother, while she had listened in silence. He had told her of his struggle in Uganda, as a student on his own, to graduate at the top of his class and of his painful, homesick years in Palestine, when his only comfort had been thoughts of coming home. And now, of how emasculating that homecoming really was, returning to discover that he was, after all, only a second-class citizen.

     "They praise us in the newspapers," he had said to her over the cook fires in her hut. "And on the radio. The government praises its 'colored' troops; Parliament cheers its 'native' heroes. They instill in us pride and self-esteem; they teach us to read and write and to fight for a unified cause—Luo and Kikuyu side by side. But when we return to Kenya, we are told there is no place for us, no jobs, and that we must go back to our homes on the native reserves!

     "Mother! All over the British Empire colonies are gaining their independence. I ask you:
Why not Kenya?"

     David knew that he was not alone in his cry. Although the outbreak of war had brought an abrupt halt to a budding political awareness among Africans, which he had taken part in back in 1937, it was being rekindled. Even now, as he emptied another calabash of beer, David knew that convening in Nairobi was a secret meeting, a session of the Kenya Africa Union, in which certain key leaders—young, educated, and energetic men—were outlining their plan for Kenya's independence. It was also rumored that Jomo Kenyatta, the famous "agitator," was planning to return to Kenya, after a seventeen-year absence. With such forces in motion, and with the imminent return of seventy thousand African troops once the war was over, David was certain that the face of Kenya was going to be altered forever.

     It meant that his land would be returned to him.

     He rose on unsteady legs and turned to look up at the ridge that rose above the river. Just over the tops of the trees he could see the lights of Bellatu, that monstrous stone house which had been built with Kikuyu blood and sweat. Thinking of the white people inside that house—the Trevertons— David thought:
Soon ...

     His mother came up to him and said, "Go to your wife now, David Kabiru. She is waiting."

     He went into the hut and stood just inside the doorway. A smoldering cook fire filled the air with smoke; it was warm and close within the mud walls; the smell of rain and beer filled his head. When he saw Wanjiru, stretched out, voluptuous and naked, a lump gathered in his throat.

     He felt like an impostor.

     A woman had the right to have a
man
for a husband. By Kikuyu law, if she was not sexually satisfied, if he did not give her children, if he could not perform like a man, then she had the right to cast him off and return to her family. David wanted desperately to show her how much he loved and desired her, to take her as a warrior should and give her pleasure. But he felt useless. He felt impotent.

     Wanjiru raised her arms and he went to her. Sinking down, David pressed his face between her large breasts and tried to tell her what was in his heart. But he had drunk too much beer. His tongue would not obey. Nor would any other part of his body.

     Wanjiru was patient at first, understanding more about men than most new brides did because she was a trained nurse. She caressed and soothed him. She murmured Kikuyu endearments. She moved her body in enticing ways. But when her efforts failed to coax a satisfactory response from him, when he remained limp in her hand, she felt her old anger flare up.

     Eight years ago she had had to goad David Mathenge into manhood, when he had stood on a tree stump spouting proverbs. Now she must do it again—on their wedding night!

     She sat up. "David, what's wrong?"

     He was devastated. The beer, his feelings of humiliation, his sense that the manhood had been cut out of him ...

     "The
thahu
is not on them!" he cried, flinging out an arm and pointing up in the direction of Bellatu. "It is upon
me!"

     Wanjiru was shocked. And when she saw tears gather in his eyes and heard the tone of self-pity in his cry, she was revolted. Nothing made her more contemptuous of a man than his acting like a woman.

     "Leave me," she said, "and come back to my bed when you are a man."

     David stumbled from the hut. He glanced over at his cousins and uncles celebrating around the fire, then turned away from them and disappeared into the night.

     "I
SAY," SAID
Tim Hopkins when Sir James came to join him on the terrace, "there appears to be something going on down at the old medicine woman's hut. What do you suppose it is?"

     James looked up at the dark sky and wondered how long the rain would hold off. Chancing going back to Kilima Simba in the middle of a storm might be risky. He decided to take Valentine up on his offer of a shakedown for the night. "Val says Wachera's son got married. They put up a new hut for the wife."

     "That will make three huts down there then at the end of the polo field."

     "Yes, and Val is furious. He's declared that he's going to tear the whole lot down in the morning, the old woman's hut included this time."

     
Good
, Tim thought.
I hope the bastard does it. The Kikuyu won't stand for it, and they'll want revenge. Maybe this time they'll feed Lord Treverton to their goats!

     Grace appeared at the French doors. She hesitated, looking at young Tim talking quietly with James in the misty night. Grace wore glasses now, but because of her blind right eye, one lens was made of plain glass.

     "James," she said, coming to join them.

     He saw that she was troubled. "What is it, Grace?"

     "Rose has just told me the most remarkable thing!" She glanced back through the French doors into the dining room, where servants were setting the table for dinner. "I'm still in shock over it. She called me up to her room
just now and told me the most extraordinary story! Mona is up there now, no doubt hearing the same thing. James, Rose is planning on leaving."

     "What do you mean, leaving?"

     "She's going away, out of Kenya. Rose is leaving Valentine!"

     He said, "What?" so loudly that Grace had to caution him to be quiet.

     "Valentine doesn't know yet. Rose is going to tell him at dinner."

     "This is absurd. Is she drunk perhaps?"

     "She's quite sober, James. You see ... there's another man."

     James and Tim stared at Grace.

     "Rose has a lover," she whispered.

     "Nonsense," James said. "She's telling you stories."

     "I don't think so. If you recall, I told you sometime ago that my sister-in-law had somehow changed over the past few months. She suddenly became animated, assertive. She began giving orders to the house staff. She actually
fired
two house girls. And she even challenged
me
on one occasion, telling me to mind my own business! Mona and I discussed it at the time, and considering that Rose is forty-six, I decided that it was due to that time of life. But now Rose tells me that she has had a lover all these months and that the two of them are running away in the morning."

     James frowned. "I don't believe it. If Rose has had a lover all this time, word would surely have gotten around. You know how like a gossipy small town Kenya is!"

     "Apparently they were able to keep it a secret. The man himself is unknown to any of us, and she kept him hidden."

     "What on earth are you talking about?"

     "Rose said it's one of the escaped Italian prisoners, the ones you and Tim searched for back in September."

     "But that was seven months ago! Surely if the man had gotten down as far as Nyeri and was trying to hide, we would have found him."

     "Not where Rose kept him."

     "Where?"

     "In her eucalyptus glade. In the
greenhouse. "

     James and Tim looked at each other. "She
kept
him there?" the younger man asked.

     "At first he was injured, she said. She nursed him back to health. Afterward they met in secret in the greenhouse."

     James shook his head. "It's preposterous. This is not at all like Rose." He thought for a moment, then added, "And is that where he's supposed to be right now, this Carlo?"

     "In the greenhouse. Waiting for her, she says. They're going to leave at first light."

     James stared at Grace for a moment, then turned away and paced the glistening stones of the terrace. It was starting to rain again. "Do you believe her, Grace?"

     "At first I didn't. But she's so calm about it, she's acting so incredibly levelheaded. And the
details.
Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do believe her."

     "Should we try to stop her?"

     "I don't see how we can. She's very determined. And then again, do we have the right to interfere?"

     "Valentine is going to be furious."

     Grace pulled her cardigan tightly about herself. "I know," she said, and hurried back inside out of the rain.

     Inside the house, where the aroma of roasting lamb mingled with the smoky fragrance of a roaring fire, Valentine stumbled back from the open window through which he had overheard every word of the conversation. He leaned against the wall, staring.