Green City in the Sun (70 page)

     David paused on the red-earth road that turned away from the ridge and went into the estate, and he thought of the two women he lived with: the indomitable medicine woman, who watched her son in a kind of wordless chastisement, and his dissatisfied wife, who complained about the slowness with which men got things done. Wanjiru had tried to goad David into joining the Kenya African Union, the new militant political organization that was coalescing all over the country. But David had had enough of fighting in Palestine. He also knew that unarmed Kikuyu, no matter how numerous, would be no match for the tanks and airplanes of Britain.

     If change was going to come to Kenya, he believed, it must be achieved through rational thought and careful process. But what power had he and others like him, educated but jobless, to start the wheels moving toward that necessary change?

     It was all that had occupied David's mind this past year, ever since his return from the Middle East. In order to be listened to, in order to convince those in power, and the rest of the world, what a righteous cause Kenyan independence was, then he himself must be a responsible, thinking man. The British, he knew, did not pay attention to the Nairobi wild boys or to the KAU hotheads. They did, however, sit down and talk with African teachers, businessmen, and men of some influence.

     As a landowner of considerable acreage, in the heart of the choicest land
in the choicest province, then David Mathenge would be listened to. He would be a leader.

     Land...

     He hungered for it—as a root does for water, he thought, as a bird does for the sky. He had been born to the land, he was tied body and soul to it, and all this would have been his if his father had not been duped nearly thirty years ago into turning it over to the white man. Wachera's words rang again in David's ears as he gazed out over the Treverton farm: "When someone steals your goat, my son, it is roasted and eaten and you forget it. When someone steals your corn, it is ground into meal and eaten and you forget it. But when someone steals your land, it is always there and you can never forget it."

     David would never forget that these rich acres had been stolen from his ignorant father, that they were David's legacy, and that they should rightfully be returned to him. But force and impulsiveness, he knew, such as were the mainstays of the Nairobi wild boys, would never get him his land back. Careful planning and caution, he told himself, to move like a lion, to study the prey, to follow it and be on constant alert for its one moment of weakness—these were going to be David Mathenge's weapons.

     He was going to get his land back, legally and honorably and in a state of prosperity.

     He looked out over the five thousand acres of coffee trees and made his decision.

     D
AVID FOUND
M
ONA
Treverton in the southeastern sector of the estate, not far, in fact, from the fateful turnoff on the Kiganjo Road. She was standing on the flatbed of her truck, shielding her eyes and turning a complete circle.

     "Damn!" she murmured, and was about to climb down when she saw David.

     He looked up at her, suddenly remembering things: how she had sat so stoically through her mother's trial; the way she rode a horse on the polo
field; the night of the fire when they both had been caught in the surgery hut.

     Mona stared down at him, feeling suddenly cold in the warm sun. Several times, during the trial, she had glanced up to find David Mathenge watching her. He watched her in the same way now, his face a mask.

     "What are you looking for, memsaab?" he asked in English.

     "My field hands. They've run off again. It's the fourth time this month." She climbed down from the truck and pushed a few strands of black hair from her face. "These berries are ready to be picked."

     "Where are the women and children?"

     "I sent them to the northern section, to do the weeding. I need those men!"

     David studied her. The memsaab was angry and frustrated, he saw, a woman now alone in the world, in that big house on these five thousand acres, with no husband, no man.

     She thrust her hands into her pockets and walked a few steps away. Mona turned her face to the rolling hills of green coffee trees, the scarf on her head fluttering. She took in a deep breath to steady herself. "How can I get them to work for me?" she said quietly.

     "I know where the men are," David said.

     She turned. "You do?"

     "They have gone to a beer drink at Mweiga. They will be gone for days."

     "But the coffee must be picked! I don't have
days!
In a week my entire crop will be lost!"

     He thought,
My crop
, then said, "I can bring the men back for you."

     Mona gave him a wary look. "Why would you do that?"

     "Because, memsaab, you need a manager and I need a job."

     Her eyes widened. "You want to work for me?"

     David nodded.

     She stared at him.

     "Do you think you could do it? I mean, all this—" She held out her arms.

     He told her of his studies in Uganda, the diploma he had received.

     Mona thought about it. She was uncertain. Could she trust him? "I've been trying to find a manager, in fact," she said slowly. "But everyone wants
to start his own farm. No one wants to work for someone else. I would pay you a good salary, and you can build a house for yourself on the estate."

     "I will need to have complete authority over the workers. I will need to have unlimited freedom. It is the only way."

     Mona considered that. Then she thought of the red figures in her ledgers, of the debts mounting up because the farm had gone neglected during the trial and the months following, and she said, "Very well then. We have a deal."

     When she held her hand out, he looked down at it, taken aback.

     She continued to hold her hand out.

     Uncertain, David Mathenge brought his right hand up and took hold of hers.

     "You can start at once," she said quietly.

     He looked down at the two hands, brown and white, clasped.

W
HEN
W
ANJIRU'S LABOR PAINS BEGAN, SHE KNEW THERE WAS
something wrong.

     Placing a hand on her lower back and her other on her abdomen, she straightened and took a few deep breaths. Mama Wachera had cautioned her to be careful with this pregnancy, but Wanjiru, stubborn and unable to be idle for even a moment, had ignored the advice of her mother-in-law and had come into the forest to collect lantana leaves.

     It was David's fault, Wanjiru decided as she waited for the contraction to subside. His mother was entering that stage of life when she should have the help of her son's several wives on the shamba, instead of having to make do with just one. But David had married only Wanjiru and, in the seven years since, had not even spoken of buying another wife. That was why Wanjiru, because Mama Wachera required the healing leaves for her medicines, had had to cross the river today and go in search of lantana.

     Wanjiru was more resentful of David's selfishness than was Mama Wachera, who was too forgiving of her irresponsible son. Wachera claimed
that there was still plenty of time yet for David to buy more wives and that he was too busy now with running the Treverton Estate to see to his duty to more than one woman. As it was, the old woman declared, Wanjiru didn't see her husband as much as she would like. How much worse, then, if she had to share him? Wanjiru disagreed. Even just one more co-wife would ease the work on the shamba and give David's mother and her daughter-in-law time to rest in the sun.

     Another pain came on, and Wanjiru placed both hands on her abdomen.
She must not lose this child.

     In her seven years of being David's wife, Wanjiru Mathenge had had six pregnancies. Of those, one had resulted in miscarriage, one in stillbirth, and three had not lived beyond infancy. Only the last, Hannah, a robust little girl who was back at the shamba with her grandmother, had survived. Wanjiru was desperate for another healthy child. And she prayed that this one would be a boy so that the spirit of her father could live again.

     On the matter of the child's name David and Wanjiru had argued. She wanted to call him, if a boy, Kamau, after her father, as Kikuyu law dictated. But David wanted his children to have
mzungu
names because, he had said, "We will one day be a free and independent modern nation. We must fall in step with the rest of the world." Sarah, if a girl, he had said, and Christopher if a boy. As headstrong as she was, Wanjiru was nonetheless subservient to her husband and had to obey him. In her heart, however, the boy would be Christopher
Kamau
Mathenge.

     When another sharp and painful contraction came on, Wanjiru looked at the sky to read the hour of the day. Sometime back the European authorities had imposed a curfew on the Nyeri District. It was because of "certain illegal activities," they had said. There were "gangsters" working in the area, and proscribed meetings were taking place at night. They were referring, Wanjiru knew, to an elusive, nebulous organization that, for reasons no one seemed to know, called itself Mau Mau. Its members hid in the forest, struck suddenly and unexpectedly at random white farms, then disappeared into the mists of Mount Kenya. It was a radical fringe element, the authorities declared, small in number and without leadership—not to be bothered about at all, really, except that a few white settlers had complained of cattle
being stolen. And so the curfew had been established. Between sunset and sunrise no African could be out of his or her hut.

     Wanjiru saw by the descending sun, a watery circle in the rain-clouded sky, that she had time yet before she must head back to the shamba. She looked for a place to sit, to ease the burden of her body, and to discern if the pains were possibly a false alarm.

     She had had premature pains like these with Hannah, a month before she was due. Wanjiru had merely rested for a few days, the pains had subsided, and Hannah had stayed within her mother until the Lord of Brightness had called her forth. So it would be with this one, Wanjiru consoled herself as she settled down upon a log.

     However, as she sat and waited for relief, as the air grew damp and cool and the sky grew grayer and darker, Wanjiru began to realize in alarm that not only were the contractions not subsiding, but they were coming closer together and intensifying.

     Deciding that she had better start back, Wanjiru stood and turned in the direction of the river.

     She froze.

     Moving through the trees was a large, dark shape. It was accompanied by sounds familiar and frightening to her: rumbles and grunts, the noise of bark being stripped from trees.

     An elephant!

     She watched and listened. How many were there? Was it a lone rogue, or was it a herd? Were they females with babies, or were they young bachelors? Suddenly scared, Wanjiru saw the tops of trees sway and shiver as the giant beast grazed its way through the forest. It was their habit, Wanjiru knew, to migrate down from the bamboo forests at the beginning of the rains, to feed in the less dense woods and where the ridges were not so steep. But she had never seen elephants this far down the mountain before.

     Wanjiru tried to sense the direction of the wind. If there were babies in the herd, or if it was an angry old bull, then her scent would cause alarm and trigger a charge.

     Wanjiru looked right and left. She heard the slow, heavy tread of feet on each side of her, the "belly rumble" that was elephant talk, the snap of twigs
and bark. They were on three sides of her—a large herd!

     Wanjiru looked over her shoulder at the thickening forest and the beginning of the mountain slope. The trees behind her did not move; there were no sounds among them. She decided she would make her way slowly backward, away from the herd and then circle them, toward home.

     She went a short distance into the woods and was stopped by a severe contraction. Wanjiru bent over and clutched herself, stifling a groan. She looked back; the elephants were drawing nearer; she saw the flash of white tusk between trees.