The Book of Secrets (22 page)

Three of the messages were short cryptic notes: two in Punjabi and one in English. The remaining three were sketches of the local terrain, troop positions indicated with crude symbols and texts. Captain Maynard looked carefully at the sketches with a
faint toothy smile. They contained up-to-date information: troop movements that had taken place over the past two days — even that very day. And the man — they all seemed to be the work of one hand — possessed a detailed knowledge of the terrain. They suggested, of course, that the man was now in the area; but more significantly, that he was a local; and not only that, one of the sketches hinted strongly that the spy was one of his own men.

Maynard looked at each of his companions in turn. Could it be one of them? The Indian: no, he was a stranger to these parts. Of the three Africans, one was also a stranger here, the other a local of whose abilities the Englishman didn’t think much. That left the fourth man, Shomari the Swahili, crafty and capable; but he was much trusted, had been with Maynard since the start of the war. Maynard went back to the sketches, handed two of them around. He held on to the third, which aroused his strongest suspicion. It showed, with the symbol of a horsehead profile, the position of a mounted company in the countryside around Kikono. The town itself was marked with an open circle and named. Under the name of the town was scrawled the word “Fisi” (hyena), almost as an afterthought. The Englishman Maynard, who was also called Fisi, finally passed on this incriminating sketch with a glint in his eye.

A South African mounted company on its way to the Taveta front for regrouping — yes, he knew about that. But what was so remarkable about hyenas in the area? Why mention them in the intelligence? No, this was not a warning against the nocturnal scavengers they could hear outside the jail, rummaging among the refuse, barking at the prisoner. It was an indication of Maynard’s position. Not many men knew of his code name; no one apart from his own men should know it.

Pipa could be heard calling out, “Let me out! There are snakes here!”

Maynard looked at Shomari and gave a nod. Two men went and brought Pipa in.

“What did the messenger say — the first time he came — about Thursday and Friday?”

“After Hamisi came Juma, after Thursday comes Friday.”

“What was this messenger like — the man in buibui?”

“Black-black. Short. Good Swahili.”

“Short as what?”

Pipa looked around. His eyes fell on Shomari: “Like him,” he said. Five-foot-six. Shomari flinched a little.

There was silence, but for the sound of paper and pencil. Shomari noted down the particulars of the six identified messages in a ledger. Every intercepted message collected in his book had a number, a place. Gradually, some of the informers would give enough of themselves away to be identified. The Indian station-master at Simba Lala, twenty-five miles east of Voi, had been caught this way after three of his messages giving train times were intercepted. He had been hanged.

“You knew Hamisi,” Fisi said, his eyes on a piece of paper he was holding. “Did you see anyone from Kikono with him there, in mosque or in his house, whom you recognized later?”

Pipa opened his mouth, then hesitated, and thus gave himself away. There was sudden silence, an anticipatory stillness; his interrogators were all looking at him.

He looked at each one of them in wonder. Who were these men? … Why did they play this game? What gave them the right to choose good and bad for him, right and wrong?

“Tumetega,” said Shomari. We have caught it.

The others nodded and smiled.

Fisi opened his mouth a little, his face glowed with pleasure. “Yes,” he said.

“Nani?” he asked Pipa. “Whom did you see with Hamisi?”

“Uso Shetani.” Ghost-face, the albino. Fumfratti.

In the distance came the sound of railway cars rumbling, clanking, soldiers shouting or singing, lorries grinding their way west, some rifle shots. Below, little Kikono was awake, but
keeping its silence as much as possible. Dawn had begun to break, more tea was brought in.

Pipa answered further questions, then was allowed to doze off. Intermittently, he opened his eyes; he was not comfortable, sitting on the chair he had been given. He thought of his wife who would have lain awake all night worrying about him. The four men at the table seemed calm now. The scraps of messages they had taken from his shop had been put away and they seemed to be simply sitting around, as at a game of cards, talking in murmurs. They would be deciding the day’s course of action. Soon Pipa would learn his fate at their hands. But all anger at him seemed to have abated, a bigger prey had been scented. It was past noon when he was told to go.

He went down the hill from the
ADC
’s residence, turned past the little mbuyu into the street of shops and houses. It looked like a normal day, except somewhat busier with all the military activity in the area. The number of layabouts was greater, which was a matter of concern. Baruti’s tea shack on the other street was bustling; it was there that the latest news about the war would be available — what exactly had transpired at Salaita Hill, how strong the Germans were. He entered his home through the front door, whose main panel was open — but Mariamu would not have opened the store because everything had been turned over and inside out by the Fisi and his men in their search the previous night.

He saw her almost immediately. She looked dead. She was in a sitting posture on the floor against the wall, her head lolling sideways towards her right shoulder. Her eyes were open. Catching his breath, emitting a choking sound, he went over to her slowly and with tenderness picked up one of her hands. He felt her forehead, caressed strands of hair, and with the back of his hand touched her neck where the line of blood ran. He pulled the hem
of her frock down so that she was decent, and dropped her hand gently to her lap. Then he ran to the mukhi.

Jamali walked hurriedly back with him. The baby, he said, had been brought earlier to their home by his wife, to relieve Mariamu. He was safe, playing, being fed — what was wrong with Mariamu? Pipa beside him, pulling him by the sleeve, was breathing fast, in large, audible gulps that might have seized and choked him.

“Oh, God!” gasped the mukhi when he saw the sight. “Oh, God and the Prophet …”

She had been violated, but there was no point in broadcasting that. All these foreigners about — brutal and shameless — Africans from all over, Punjabis and Baluchis and Rajputs, it could have been any one of those depraved men. Poor innocent, they all said when they buried her, who could have wished this for her, and why?

Could it be
them
, Pipa thought. The Sufis of Moshi. As revenge. Punishment. But why
her
? Why not me?

Later Pipa went through Mariamu’s belongings, sifted through her trunk to look for things he could send as offerings to the mosque, whose value she could reap in the other life, but there was nothing suitable except her pachedi. As he extracted the green garment whose shimmer had once thrilled him so, he felt a hard flat object wrapped inside it. As he unfolded the slippery cloth, he found himself holding a book.
The
book. He was so startled he dropped it back into the trunk, then picked it up again. Bwana Corbin’s book, he thought, which he himself would have so liked to steal that day, now hidden among his wife’s things! He recalled the morning, coming from the
ADC
’s house, seeing the book with a pen lying on the chair where Corbin had left them in a hurry … then meeting Mariamu and Khanoum walking in the direction from which he had come, to the
ADC
’s
house to collect her things. She must have taken it then, along with the pen, which was now here inside the book. But why?

He examined it briefly. There were some snapshots in it — in one of them the
ADC
Bwana Corbin on a horse.

Why? To steal back her secret — her shame — from the Englishman? To prove to her husband her innocence? Or to permit herself — and her husband — to take revenge on the mzungu? A revenge he himself had been unable to take. So was this her gift to him; one which she, one day, some evening in better times, would have shown him had she lived? …

He was convinced the book contained the answer to his torment. What was the relationship between the
ADC
and his Mariamu? Was the boy, Aku, really his own? He could not read it, yet he would take this gift with him wherever he went. It was from her and she must be in it, described in it. The book contained her spirit.

From the personal notebook of Pius Fernandes
April 1988, Moshi

It has been a little over a week since I came to Moshi and met Young Jamali. Together we have visited some of the sites, and he has told me stories and anecdotes he heard as a child in his home … and much else besides that is not pertinent to my inquiries …

Yanga (Young Africans) have been beaten at soccer by their old rivals Simba (formerly Sunderland), and for the last hour the Moshi bus station has been in an uproar of celebration and recrimination. The Taveta bus is, predictably, late, and when it does arrive its passengers are celebrating and transistors blare.

Young Jamali and I push through the throng with our tickets and confront the conductor confidently. “We have seat numbers!” “Of course,” he says. “Go right in.” But the bus, coming from Arusha, is smaller, does not conform to the seat plan flourished before us earlier at the ticket office. What we thought
would be the comfortable mid-section is, in this vehicle, the last row of seats.

It is a hellish, rattling ride. We cling to our seats as to our lives. We are on a trade route, and with us are seasoned, hardy passengers: Masai youths, Taita men and women. Now that market day is over, they bring fresh goods from Tanzania, pay not duties but bribes at the border, freely exchange and carry forbidden currency. The young man sitting next to us explains how it is all done: everyone makes a living — from the blustering policeman who first boards the bus to the bullying customs officer with darting eyes to the slow-witted immigration inspector who takes ten minutes to press a stamp on our papers. Who can survive on a government salary, our friend offers a truism, putting a candy into his mouth and once more taking a quick reassuring glance along the luggage rack where his goods lie, and an anxious look outside lest something of his be carried off the roof of the bus. We arrive in Taveta at about midnight.

It is a black moonless night folding in dim-glowing pockets of light. There is a slight chill in the air. To our right as we start off from the bus station is a large open area that has been used as a garbage dump. This presumably is where the market was held. The smells of the day have long ripened, though the crisp night air abates them and keeps them distant. We walk along what seems to be the only main street (the other direction, we have figured, goes out of town, Voi-way). Some doors are open, shadowy lights inside. Strains of music. Hardly a soul on the unpaved, cratered road. A sign on a wall,
MODERN CINEMA NEW VIDEO
, beside it posters advertising a double feature — Sylvester Stallone and Amitabh Bachan, Hollywood and Bollywood, facing opposite directions. The buildings are low, part mud, part cement, part brick — whatever fit — the roofs, corrugated iron. Suddenly we come upon an amazingly modern building.
TAVETA INN
is painted boldly in foot-long letters on the side wall. The doorway is lighted, orange. There is a tree outside, cars parked, an askari.
We enter and are greeted by a young man in blue Kaunda suit. “Welcome,” he says. The rooms are, to our surprise, very good.

I have not felt so alone, so away, in years. The last time was when I first came to Africa, long ago. Outside, the music still plays. Downstairs in the lobby two men talk earnestly in the bar, their voices carry clearly and without inhibition. There comes the sound of water, from somewhere. Young Jamali sleeps in the adjoining room. So many times in the past few weeks I have seen this town, this area, in my mind as it must have been eighty, ninety years ago; imagined the thousands of troops and animals on the march across the dry land, digging in battle lines, relinquishing them; the guns firing, the bayonets thrusting; the disease and thirst and death. Now to be here … the feeling is eerie, unreal.

Morning, after a Swahili breakfast. The town is so exposed, so uniformly bright, the sun seems to have simply poured in, leaving not a spot untouched. This is the town at the edge of a desert that during the war had to be crossed to recapture it.

But there is no sign of the war here, no sign of the past. History drifts about in the sands, and only the fanatically dedicated see it and recreate it, however incomplete their visions and fragile their constructs. Yes, says the morning askari, at his post at the doorway, his grandfather would talk of the old days, of the war and the Germans. But he had died recently. If only we had come two or three months ago. The manager arrives, unhappy that it is the askari who receives the benefit of our conversation.

“The guests wish to know of old times, Germans and so on,” says the askari.

The manager sends him off and eyes us. “Who are you?” he asks.

When we tell him he shakes our hands and says, “My friends, this place is full of history.”

From then on he is unstoppable. His name is James. A slight
man of about thirty, with a thin moustache, a beige Kaunda suit today.

“Are you from here?” I ask hopefully.

He stops. “No, sir. I am from Rabai. On the coast.” He is not going to say more about that. He continues: “Did you know that this town was the only British territory — anywhere on our globe, mind you — that was captured by the Germans in the Great War. They held it until …” and he goes on, telling us a history we already know.

“Are there people here — wazees — who remember the war, perhaps stories from their fathers? …” I ask.

“The last one died just six weeks ago. I doubt if you will find anyone else.… Come with me.”

Dutifully we follow him back inside, take the stairs to the roof terrace two floors up. This is the highest point in the town, looking out upon the entire countryside for miles in all directions. Instinctively drawing our breath we gather to take in Kilimanjaro. There are huts on its slope, smoke rising at a few spots; the round peak is visible, capped with snow: so majestic and yet so benevolent. Almost emerging from its side is a range of hills. “In the hills there is Lake Chala, a crater lake,” James says. “It is fed by an underground stream. The stream continues underground from there — look, you can see the line of vegetation that follows it above the ground — and erupts in a spring there.” He shows us some dense growth in the distance. “Next it feeds Lake Jipe,” he says, pointing now southwards, “and proceeds to the Pare Mountains in Tanzania. Taveta, you see, is practically surrounded by an underground river.” He beams proudly.