Green City in the Sun (76 page)

     Outraged at the filth, the smell, the wretched existence of these unprotected and abandoned women, David had gone through the tenements, and he had prayed with each fearful or sullen expression he encountered that he would not find his wife and children here.

     In the end he had not, and now he was on the road going out of the city to meet Mona at Geoffrey Donald's new sign.

     Was this the time, David asked himself as he channeled his anger and frustration toward the man he hated, to be writing slogans and attracting tourist trade? With Jomo Kenyatta, an innocent and peaceful man to David's thinking, undergoing an unfair trial and cruel detention, with twenty thousand African children out of school because the British had closed the Kikuyu Independent Schools, with people being murdered in their huts, with women being terrorized and raped by undisciplined Home Guards and giving themselves to strange men in exchange for protection, with Kikuyu killing Kikuyu and the whole of Kenya falling apart and disgracing itself in the eyes of the world—was
this
a time to be making speeches and unveiling signs?
My God
, David thought,
the man must be as stupid as his face.

     But David knew that Geoffrey Donald was not a stupid man; on the contrary, he was very smart and therefore to be watched with great caution. That was one of the reasons David hated Geoffrey. Another was Geoffrey's close friendship with Mona. The man tried to run her life, David had observed, forever giving her unnecessary advice or criticizing the way she did things. Mona, for reasons beyond David's understanding, tolerated it. He also didn't like the fact that Geoffrey was always over at Bellatu and that he seemed to spend more time with Mona than with his own wife. But what David disliked most of all about Geoffrey Donald was the way he sometimes looked at Mona.

     David recalled now how Geoffrey and Mona had once ridden horses on the polo field. He remembered the day she'd fallen off her horse and Geoffrey had lifted her up and kissed her.

     David's grip tightened on the steering wheel.

     Quite a few African soldiers, stationed overseas during the war, had had intimate relations with white women—prostitutes mainly, but also European women who were curious about African men and hadn't grown up with
the racial prejudice most Kenya white women had. Those soldiers had done a lot of boasting. European women, they had declared to their comrades in the segregated barracks, were more responsive and more easily satisfied than African women were because they had not undergone the
irua
operation. More than that, the soldiers had bragged, European women appreciated the amorous skills of the African warrior.

     It had disgusted David, whose heart and body had burned for Wanjiru. And after the war he had disapproved of those men who had brought back European wives. It was an insult, he had said, to their African sisters.

     When he finally sighted the crowd at the roadside, David slowed the car and let it roll to a stop. He looked for Mona among the audience, which, he noted in resentment, was cleanly divided between African and white, the former sitting out in the hot sun on the ground, the latter on chairs under the shade. He had been told that later there would be refreshments at the Norfolk Hotel, with the whites inside the coolness of the elegant dining room, the "natives" out on the lawn. So much, he decided bitterly, for racial integration.

     He saw Mona sitting near the dais.

     As he stared at her, David recalled again that morning of sixteen years ago when he had seen Mona and Geoffrey riding on the polo field. He pictured them now—the way they had stood with their arms around one another, their mouths pressed together. Kikuyu men who had discovered kissing, in their exposure to European women, had declared it the greatest gift civilization had brought to Africa.

     David watched Mona as she discreetly searched the edge of the crowd. When her eyes met his, her mouth lifted in a brief smile. He thought he saw a look of relief pass over her face, as if she had been worrying about him.

     He cursed his feelings for her; they felt like a betrayal of his people.

     As David listened to the applause for Geoffrey Donald's vapid speech, he tried once again, as he had so many times, to analyze and understand, and therefore to figure out, how to rid himself of his growing desire for Mona Treverton.

     As a thinking, educated man David Mathenge believed that any difficulty could be overcome and solved through rational, conscientious process.
He spoke about it at KAU meetings, urging his comrades not to take the terrorist way out, explaining that, as he had seen with his own eyes in Palestine, such action only provoked a like counteraction, with the result being a never-ending war. "We must have the respect of all the nations of the world," he said repeatedly. "If we are to stand on our own and govern ourselves as other countries do, then it must be as honorable men. Mau Mau is dishonorable. I do not want an
uhuru
gotten by such means. Mau Mau must not win." It was the only way, he believed, to rid Kenya of an unwanted evil. Therefore, in the same way David hoped to rid himself of his unwanted feelings for Mona.

     When had the desire begun? He didn't know. Possibly the birth of this second, unwanted hunger had happened at the time of the death of his love for Wanjiru, six years ago, when she had driven his love for her out of his heart with her sharp voice, her cutting words, her open scorn for his belief in a peaceful revolution. Perhaps, when his heart was suddenly emptied of desire and affection for his wife and left cold and wanting, he had been vulnerable. But why Mona Treverton? he wondered. A woman who was, in fact, his enemy. Why hadn't he turned his affections to any one of the many husbandless women in the village, all of whom would have been anxious to please him and not a few of whom were young and pretty? Why this white woman, who was too pale and skinny by African standards, whom he had once hated, and who lived a life alien to his own and had no real knowledge or comprehension of the Kikuyu way of life?

     
I could teach her
, his traitorous heart whispered.

     It was not, however, as simple as that. There were insurmountable obstacles to the outrageous fantasy David entertained.

     Kikuyu men who married white women were cast out of the tribe and disinherited because it was taboo for a Kikuyu man to lie down with an uncircumcised woman. He brought shame to himself and to his family; he dishonored his father's name and his ancestors. His mother, David knew, would be devastated if she suspected his feelings for the white woman—a hundred times more so because this particular white woman was among those she had cursed on Christmas Eve nearly thirty-four years ago.

     David pounded the steering wheel.

     It was all so convoluted! David respected and feared and believed in his mother's
thahu.
He believed that Mona was truly doomed, as her brother and parents had been. He wanted to save Mona from his mother's curse. But to defy Wachera would be to dishonor himself and revile his ancestors. He would be no better than Mau Mau and therefore not a man worthy to live.

     But there was an even greater obstacle to his madness. There was the question of Mona's feelings toward him.

     On the day she had hired him as her estate manager, Mona had apologized to him for her cruelty to him when they were children. Her voice had been so sincere, her smile so warm, and she had held out her hand to him—a gesture that would put an African in jail were it to be witnessed— that David's resentment of her and his plans for revenge had been shaken. In the seven years since, she had treated him as a friend and equal. Those occasions in which he was aware of their racial separation were few and far between. But surely, he told himself as he watched the audience break up now that Geoffrey's speech was over, surely that was all David was to Mona: a friend!

     Lastly, there was the color bar.

     This was what made a mockery of his insane desire for her and what convinced him that Mona would only ever look upon him as a friend, the fact that, quite simply, Kenyan Africans and Kenyan whites never crossed that crucial line.

     David started the car and drove closer. He parked, got out, and waited for Mona to finish talking with Geoffrey. There was a great deal of handshaking and congratulating among the whites, while the Africans slowly dispersed and began the long, hot walk to the Norfolk for their free refreshments.

     Geoffrey escorted Mona to her car, his hand on her arm, both of them laughing. When he saw David, Geoffrey said in a not too discreet voice, "Really, Mona, don't you think it rather irregular that you let that boy of yours drive your car?"

     She stopped and pulled her arm away. "I wish you hadn't said that, Geoff. And I'll thank you not to say anything like that in my presence again."

     He watched her go, a cold, smoldering look on his face.

     "I'm sorry, David," Mona said quietly. "I'm sorry you heard that."

     "He is entitled to his opinion, as long as I am entitled to mine."

     She smiled. Then, remembering the reason for his needing the car, she asked what success he had had in Nairobi.

     He gazed past her and out across the plains. Mona was wearing the lavender scent again. "None. I found no trace of Wanjiru or anyone who could give me information. I fear now that she is not in Nairobi after all." It was not that David wanted his wife back—she had divorced him; she was free to go—but the children were his, and it was for them, Christopher and Hannah, that he searched.

     He was about to say something further when a great roar suddenly filled the sky. Everyone looked up to see four New Zealand jet fighters streak across the blue. They were heading for the Aberdare forest in the north.

     "That'll show 'em we mean business!" someone said. "That'll put the fear of God into the Mau Mau bastards!"

     A police car appeared on the road, driving at a furious rate, not slowing down for people in the way but only when it drew near to the deputy governor. Before the car had stopped, a white policeman in khaki uniform jumped out and came running with a piece of paper in his hand. Everyone watched as the deputy governor read the dispatch. When he said, "Oh, my God," Geoffrey took the paper and read it.

     "What is it?" Mona asked.

     "There's been a massacre in the village at Lari! Mau Mau locked the huts and set fire to the roofs! A hundred and seventy-two people were either burned alive or slashed to death with pangas when they tried to escape!"

     "When?"

     "This morning. No one knows the identities of the attackers...." Geoffrey looked at David.

O
N
J
UNE
14, 1953,
FOUR
A
FRICAN WOMEN WALKED INTO THE
dining room of the very posh and elegant Queen Victoria Hotel on Lord Treverton Avenue and sat down at a table spread with Irish linen, china, and silver.

     The white patrons in the dining room fell into a stunned silence as the four calmly gave food orders to the shocked African waiter. The women, who wore cotton print dresses and
kanga
turbans on their heads, requested
irio
and
posho
, traditional Kenya dishes, which, of course, the Queen Victoria did not serve.

     Recovering from their shock and realizing what this was about, the indignant white customers got up and left. A few minutes later the police arrived. The four women put up a terrific fight, which resulted in the destruction of much china and crystal, flower vases, and the dessert cart. Three were arrested, but one managed to escape, running through the kitchen with her baby bouncing on her back. Before disappearing down the alley and from there into the warrens of Nairobi's crowded African sections, she
turned and hurled a rock through one of the Queen Victoria's windows. It had a note tied around it which read, "The soil is ours," and it was signed "Field Marshal Wanjiru Mathenge."

     "J
AMES
, I
HAVE
already told you, and I mean it! I will
not
carry a gun." Grace put the revolver back into his hands and walked away.