Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (35 page)

Raj flicked off the TV, sending the room into a stunned silence. He knelt down beside his son but Jai brushed him away. ‘I told you we should have stayed. We could have saved him but now he's dead.'

‘It's not your fault. You need to rest.'

‘What was my son doing on TV?' Pooja kept demanding. ‘What has happened? Why is he like this?'

She was ignored by everyone in the room as Raj asked Leena, ‘Help me with your brother.'

Arms slung over strained necks, slow and careful footsteps led him up the stairs into the soothing darkness of his room. His father went to get a sleeping pill while his sister stayed beside him, touching his face and asking repeatedly, ‘You're going to be okay, you will be okay, won't you?'

Raj re-entered the room, forcing his son into a sitting position and putting a small white pill in his hand. ‘It'll make you feel better.'

‘I have to go and find Steven. He planned all of this. I knew it and I didn't stop him.'

‘Tomorrow,' said Raj, pushing the medicine between his tightly shut lips. ‘You have to sleep now.'

As the medication began taking effect, he heard them leaving – dulled footsteps and muted concerns as the world began to unravel, become loose and inconsistent. He spotted a shadow at his door, hovering, and called out, ‘Anthony?' and in a flash of lucidity, recognized the hurried gait, the straight back. ‘Oh, Ma,' catching the sob as it came up but even that was too hard and he released it with a despairing grunt.

The back of her hand on his cheek, brushing away his hair – weathered lips to his feverish forehead. ‘It's okay,
beta
, just close your eyes. I'm right here beside you,' and he did as she said, surrendering to her even, tender strokes, suspended somewhere in childish happiness before tumbling, spiraling, speeding head first into a waiting nightmare.

Steven was stacking his folders, rolling up the banners and posters from the protests when Jai went to see him the next day. He was alone in the sloped-wall lecture room, behind him a large, green blackboard that had recently been wiped clean. The smell of chalk-dust was heavy in the air.

‘I thought I might see you here.' He stopped what he was doing when he saw Jai come down the aisles between the seats. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘What happened to Anthony?' Jai stopped at the front of the room, the podium between him and Steven. He held onto it for support, still feeling the effects from the day before.

‘Surely you must have watched the news.'

‘I want the truth.'

‘I'm afraid I don't understand.'

Jai leaned forward. ‘I saw you speaking to that policeman and the reporter yesterday before the protests.'

Steven shrugged, collecting up his papers in a yellow manila folder, sliding it into his satchel. ‘That happens. I'm the chairman – I have to give statements on behalf of all the students.'

‘You planned the whole thing to get some media attention.' Jai's neck gave a violent shake, anger rushing out of him, unstoppable. ‘You had them take Anthony away – you had him killed so that you would have another cause to fight for, another excuse to be on television.'

Steven's voice remained calm, a half-smile upon his thin lips. ‘But you saw me yesterday at Chiromo station. I was coming to help him.'

‘You wanted to make sure they got rid of him. He knew what you were up to and you didn't like that.' Jai had an urge to reach out and grab the man, shake the ugly confession from him. ‘You also knew it was the perfect way to get camera crews out to your protests, to make a name for yourself.'

‘I'm very sorry you have misunderstood me in this way,' Steven said. ‘I thought you wanted to help this cause but I can see I was very wrong.'

Jai's fist hit the podium. ‘I saw you talking to the journalist and that cop, and then during the riots they came straight for Anthony. No one else – they arrested him on the spot even though we both know he didn't believe in violence.'

‘Just because you met him once doesn't mean you knew him.' Steven's usual velvet-like disposition turned sour.

‘You saw them put him in a van. You could have saved him then but you didn't.'

‘There were other people who needed me. I couldn't leave them alone – Anthony would have understood that.' Steven came around the podium to stand beside him. He put a hand on Jai's shoulder as if they were friends sharing a secret. ‘In every war there are casualties.'

Jai pushed his hand away. ‘Don't talk to me like I'm one of those idiots who follow you around campus,' he warned. ‘You had Anthony killed for your own reasons, not for a greater good. And even a greater good doesn't justify his death.'

The smile lingered on Steven's face even as he said, ‘Please do not come back for any more meetings. You are no longer welcome.'

Jai could have tackled the man, thrown him to the ground and inflicted upon him the pain he deserved. But instead, he collapsed into a chair as Steven left, drained of energy, his body sore and bruised. Through the thin walls he could hear lecture hall doors slamming open as the last class of the day finished. People hurried down the hallway outside, calling out and laughing at one another, as if today was just an ordinary day – as if one of them, the best of them, had not just been lost. It was worse than anything – that careless, uninhibited sound of life moving on.

It was too early in the morning for such nonsense and Jeffery spat out the tobacco he was chewing in irritation. It sprayed thickly at the corner of the vandalized wall.

‘Fucking guys.' He stamped his feet against the wet cold. ‘Fucking, fucking guys.'

There had been a heavy downpour the night before, which had lasted well into the early hours of the morning, and now the streets were flooded with rainwater – tepid, brownish streams that disrupted day-to-day activities. But the wall of this public toilet, in the direct eyeline of the main road, was protected by a wide shade of trees so that despite the storm it had remained dry and resolute, shouting out its truth.

It was a simple graffiti – one that would require only a single layer of fresh paint to cover up – but Jeffery refused to look at it because the words burned holes into his eyes and caused him to shrink away in terrible shame.

THE LEADER
S WE HAVE
Unreliable
Inconsistent
Mean
Buffoons
Inconsiderate
Slow
Lazy
Greedy
Vultures

THE LEADERS WE WANT
Visionary
Patriotic
Intelligent
Women
In touch with the people
Competent
Honest
Reliable
Men

His eyes moved to the right side of the wall, down toward the corner where the slogan had been scrawled.
Kenya ni yetu.

‘Who are these guys?' he wondered out loud to the police officer beside him. ‘I've seen their words on three different graffiti walls now. One in Westlands, in Parklands near the police station and now, here.' The muscles of his face rolled into tight knots of aggravation. ‘I don't want to waste my time with these things.'

The writing on the wall angered him because it dragged up a memory rusty with disuse, one he thought he had rid himself of. He stared dazedly at the left side of the list, the words forming like clots in his chest, and he loosened his shirt collar.

‘What shall we do now,
mzee?
' the officer beside him asked.

‘Call someone from the city council.' Jeffery made his way back to his white Toyota, pushing away congealed mud and resisting the temptation to smear it across the wall, hiding the words away until someone could get to it. He couldn't bear the idea of so many people seeing the words. ‘Tell them to come straight away.
Mafalas
,' he muttered to himself as he swung wildly on to the main road, cutting through cars and ignoring their protests. ‘Just wait until I catch them. I'll teach them a lesson they'll never forget.'

The drive back to the police station was excruciatingly long and he wished he had taken the other police officer with him. The radio didn't work and in the silence his remorse was free to sit in the passenger seat and grow fat.

To contain his own guilt was easy. There were countless spaces, tiny secret pockets within him in which he could hide it, shut it away so he would never have to think of it again. But to have someone else recognize it, display it for the entire country to see, was another matter altogether. He felt exposed; a big-bellied fraud, which was why, as he stormed past his secretary, he snapped, ‘Why are you looking at me like that?'

‘That boy is here to see you again.' She kept her voice hushed, inaudible to the rest of the office, adding, ‘I tried to send him away, to do what you told me—' as Jeffery slammed out the sound of her apologies with a kick to his door.

He came around his desk and sank into his chair with a growl. ‘What have I told you about visiting me in my office?' His eyes jerked up, the hair on his neck rising. ‘What happened to you?'

The boy stank – his whole office filled with his dampness, like wet garbage. Nick had moved the extra chair to the corner of the room, where he huddled into himself behind the door.

‘All I know is that I woke up this morning on the bank of Nairobi River with no idea how I got there.'

Jeffery rolled his eyes. ‘If you're stupid enough to become so inebriated, that's none of my concern.'

‘It was those men.' Nick spoke in a rush. ‘They want money. They want more money all the time and I don't have any to give them.'

A fresh bruise was breaking out on his cheek – a blooming, purple pain. Jeffery noticed how the boy had changed in a few short months – he was bony and gray-skinned, with a nervous habit of twisting his head from side to side, continually checking his surroundings. Ducking down at the slightest sound.

Jeffery clenched the edge of his desk. ‘You're becoming very problematic,
kijana.
'

‘They know who you are.' The confession came like a gust – a pulse of blood from a severed artery no longer able to hold itself together – thick and fast.

‘Say again?' Jeffery cocked an eyebrow, as if intimidation could force the truth to change.

‘They know that I'm working for you and they said they want you to help. If you don't—' Nick wrung his fingers desperately, flapped his wrists up and down.

‘If I don't, then what?'

‘They'll make you.' Unable to sit any longer, Nick rose, his eyes running to every corner of the room.

‘Get out,' Jeffery commanded. ‘I don't want you to come back here.'

At the door, Nick turned. ‘
Mzee
,
you must understand. Killing to these men means nothing.'

‘You just worry about yourself.' Jeffery waved him out. But before he left, the policeman barked, ‘Don't forget – Wednesday at Aqua Bar. I'm expecting something.'

‘Yes.'

‘And I don't care if they took all you had, find a way to get some more. I'm not in the business of feeling sorry for anyone.'

Tucked away within a high-roofed, airy studio, off a busy street packed with jacaranda trees and Chinese restaurants, Michael was painting. Running along the fresh white walls, pitched up against window frames, there were numerous photographs and artwork, all of which were unfinished, most abandoned almost as soon as they were started. Littered across the floor were his tools: a second-hand easel with a loose leg, different-sized paintbrushes and empty cans of spray paint. He sat amid the clutter, lost in the startling clearness of his mind.

He took photographs for a living, sprayed walls for the love of his country. But his paintings were personal. How soothing it was to turn himself over to the thread-like strokes of the brush, the cheerfulness of color and shapes and various patterns – to discover a cohesiveness in ideas without edges and boundaries.

The sound of a key turning in the lock broke him out of this spell and he stood quickly, dragging the painting to the farthest corner and facing it against the wall. As Jai stepped into the room, Michael turned around guiltily.

‘I thought you were in class.'

‘The seminar ended early,' his friend said, adding sadly, ‘Someone from the city council is already there, painting it over.'

‘We expected that,' Michael reminded him. ‘It was in a very public spot. Politicians pass there every morning.'

‘It was only up there for three hours.'

Michael grinned. ‘That tells you how effective it was.'

‘How's that?'

‘No one ever bothers to cover up lies. It's the truth they're all running from.'

Jai looked around the room. He noticed the photograph sitting against the desk. ‘That's new.'

They stared together at the young lion yawning, the tiny, bronze hairs of his mane bristling and curious.

‘I got a contract with a travel agency,' Michael replied. ‘I went to the National Park a few days ago and found this guy.'

After having worked with
matatu
owners for several months, Michael had been drawn to art and its various forms, so when Jai bought him a camera for his birthday, he quickly went about collecting as much life as he could: the legless beggar on the street who walked on his arms, balls of inflexible muscle sweating in the sun; the young girl selling red peanuts so that she could afford her school textbooks; two lovers leaning against a bus post, caught up beneath the silver threat of clouds. Like Jai, Michael was often frustrated with the impermanence of graffiti, which had caused him to gravitate toward photographs and the reliability of them, yet there had been something that kept tugging him back to blank spaces in dark corners, waiting to be filled. He had taken Jackie's advice and begun his own form of quiet protestation, starting off in toilets and isolated places such as the kiosks in Kibera slums. It was only when he and Jai began working together that everything had changed.