The Mzungu Boy (2 page)

“Death,” we told him.

“Again!” he ordered.

“Death,” we screamed.

“Louder!”

“Death!”

“Good,” he said. “Now you will all face the wall, drop your shorts and bend over for your wages.”

He gave us four strokes of the cane each. We had to count the wages of our sin out loud as we received them. It was exactly like death.

Afterwards we stood before him, numb from head to toe with the shock and the pain, unable to think and unable to even shed the tears in our heart. And while pain ran up and down our backsides, the headmaster recited his famous creed.

“Lesson one,” he started.

Whack! went the cane.

“It does not matter if you are raided by an army of soldiers or an army of buffalos,” he told us. “You come to school as usual, in uniform and on…?”

“Time!” we yelled.

“Lesson one!”

Whack! The cane again.

“It does not matter if your father's hut catches fire and burns to the ground with your books in it,” he told us. “You come to school as usual, in uniform and on…?”

“Time!” we yelled.

“Again!”

“Time!”

“Always on…?”

“Time!”

“Because time is…?”

“Money!”

“Good,” he told us. “Lesson one.”

Whack!

“It does not matter if you are ill with a cold, stomach worms or diarrhea,” he said to us. “You come to school as usual, in uniform and on…?”

“Time!” we yelled.

“And the only time I will excuse you from coming to school is if you are…?”

“Dead!” we yelled.

“Good,” he said. “You may go to your classes.”

And we rushed out of his office to our classrooms to face the class teachers.

Life at school was one long battle. But there was not much going on in class that day. It was closing day, and the teachers were just as weary of school as we were. They left us to clean the classrooms and prepare them for when we came back after the holidays.

Closing day was also the day the boys settled old scores. The biggest group of boys was from Majengo, the sprawling slum village to which our school was attached. It was made up of the toughest orphans and street urchins and was the most feared. Every farm around Nanyuki had its own gang of rough boys, banding together to protect themselves and each other from the rest.

All the term's quarrels were settled on closing day. That way there was no headmaster to report to, and all would be forgotten by the time school reopened for the next term. The various groups would waylay one another on the way from school and battle it out for hours.

I did not belong to any of these gangs. I did not know how to fight without being hurt or hurting someone. If I hurt someone, and my father found out, he would hurt me worse himself. I dared not win and I could not afford to lose.

But that did not mean I did not get into trouble. From time to time the boys from one gang or the other would gang up and beat the hell out of me just for the fun of it. From time to time too, I would corner the weakest of them and rub his face in the dirt. Then it would start all over again, with me being warned to watch out for closing day.

When closing time came, I left school with a group of boys from Koro's farm, hiding out in their midst while the boys from Majengo looked all over for me. The boys from Koro's were well known for their fierceness, but they traveled such a long distance to school and back that they had less time to get into fights.

Two

WHEN WE CAME TO
the log bridge over the river, I said goodbye to the boys from Koro's farm.

The farm was far out in the Loldaiga plain, another five miles away. They had to cross both the Nanyuki and the Liki to get home. I had often chased hares and hunted for warthogs on the grass plateau between the two rivers and on the Loldaiga plain, but I had never been to Koro's farm.

Swinging my school bag over my shoulder, I walked along the river bank toward home. It was dark and lonely along the fishermen's path. The sun never penetrated the old mokoe trees that grew thickly along the river.

But I was not scared. I had walked the forest paths many times before. Alone, I had explored all the forests and caves around Bwana Ruin's farm, and I had never come across anything that frightened me even a little.

I knew the forest very well. On weekends and school holidays I spent a lot of time walking the path between the log bridge and the fish pool near where the farm laborers drew their water. It was peaceful among the cool, dappled shadows, the black river rocks and their cold mountain waters with pools so deep and silent you couldn't hear the water run.

I knew pools where fish jumped all day. I knew hollows under the river banks and the roots of the mokoe trees where wild ducks laid their eggs. I knew caves too cold and dark for ghosts to hide in.

My best secret was the pool where the ducks hid their eggs. I dared not take any of my village friends to these places. I was afraid they would throw stones at the birds or steal their eggs.

I was never in a hurry to get home from school. My mother had an endless list of things to keep a boy busy. The list kept growing, and the only way I knew to keep away from it was to get home late.

“Kariuki,” she would say. “Go do this and that. And when you are back, do this and that. Then go down to the river to fetch some water. Then run behind Muturi's hut and fetch me some spinach. Then…”

Before I got back from any of it she would be waiting for me to cut wood for her.

I walked slowly along the river bank, stopping every now and then to watch the red-billed hornbills that feasted on the seeds of the pondo trees. The forest was quiet and peaceful, the silence broken only by the sounds of the birds and the chatter of the monkeys in the trees.

When I came to the duck pool, I hid my bag by the footpath and slid down the steep bank to the river. Hopping from stone to stone, I came to a sheltered place under the bank. I sat down on a huge rock, dangled my bare feet in the still pool and waited.

If I was still enough, the ducks would come out of their hollows to swim in the pool and to catch insects for their young. Sometimes they would bring their newly hatched ducklings out for me to see.

No one could see me from the path above. Across the river the forest was thick, dark and quiet. It was so dark that crickets could not tell day from night and shrieked all day long.

I sat there for a long while. From time to time a leaf or a seed fell from the trees into the pool, sending beautiful rings eddying across the still water. Occasionally a fish rose to gobble up an insect and then sank back to the bottom of the pool. I knew from experience that they were very hard to catch.

Eventually my patience was rewarded. A family of ducks came floating downstream, moving with the current and letting the water carry them around the rocks and under the roots of the trees. They shot into the still pool and went round and round in the eddies without moving their feet until they reached the dark, quiet places where the water never moved.

There were ten of them — a mother, a father and eight ducklings with yellow bellies and pink feet and beaks. They swam around the pool picking insects and bits of leaves out of the water. The ducklings followed their mother wherever she went, picked at whatever she picked at. She behaved just like a mother hen. The only difference was that she could swim and lived in water.

They were not at all surprised to find me at their favorite pool. We had met many times before and they knew me.

A long green snake shot across the pool, swam very fast past the ducks and slithered into the undergrowth on the far bank. The ducks ignored the snake. I was not afraid either. It was a harmless river snake. I was only afraid of the poisonous puff-adder and the grass vipers.

In the trees above the pool, parrots feasted on the seeds of the pondo trees. A turaco flew down from the tree and went chattering down the river.

Suddenly the father duck squawked and took off downstream, closely followed by the mother duck and her ducklings. In a moment they were gone, ducking under the overhanging bush and out of sight.

I searched the river bank above and along the foot path for the cause of their alarm. Apart from the wind blowing in the trees and the river murmuring on the stones, the forest was quiet.

Then I heard it, the crack of a breaking twig deep in the shadows. I saw a slight movement where the sound had come from.

I peered across the river. For a long moment I saw nothing. Then I saw a dark shadow cross a spot of light. I couldn't tell whether it was human or animal, so faint was the movement.

I sniffed the air. There was the unmistakable smell of wild buffalo in the air. This made me even more restless. A few weeks before his hunting rifle went missing, Bwana Ruin had shot a lone buffalo that had frightened the herdsmen and killed some dogs in the forest.

I would never forget the smell of buffalo.

I was so busy searching the shadows for buffalo that I did not see the men until they stepped out of the shadows onto the bank. There were two of them, big and bearded, wearing dark green greatcoats. One of them had a big hunting rifle like the one Bwana Ruin had lost, and the other one was armed with a spear and a club.

The one with the gun waved.

I waved back. They did not look like forest guards so I decided to go home. I stood up, fear gnawing at my courage.

“Are you from this farm?” the man asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know Hari?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

The men looked at each other. The one with the gun beckoned.

“Come,” he said.

“What for?” I asked.

“I want to send you,” he said. “To Hari.”

He reached into the pocket of his greatcoat. I was quite scared now.

“No,” I said. “Don't send me. I must go home now.”

“Wait!” he said.

But I could not wait any longer. I hopped back to the edge of the river and scrambled up the bank. There I came face to face with real terror. Barring my way to the top were three wild men who smelled like buffalo and carried spears and rungus. One of them had a long ugly scar on his cheek.

I dodged past them. The one with the scar caught me by the neck and lifted me off my feet. He shook me like a jimi shaking rabbits in its teeth.

When he put me down I had no more fight left. He held me by the neck until the other two had crossed the river.

“Why do you run?” asked the one with the rifle.

“I want to go home,” I wailed.

He studied me for a long moment. I was afraid he would order the other man to fling me into the river.

“Do you know who we are?”

“Let me go!”

“Don't be afraid,” he told me. “We are your friends.”

They were not. They stole sheep and killed people. That was what everyone said. We were to report when we saw them.

“If you tell the soldiers about us they will come and kill us,” he said, “and you will not have friends in the forest anymore. You wouldn't like that, would you?”

There were more of them in the forest. I could not see them but I could smell them, and I heard them breathe.

“Bwana Ruin is a liar,” he told me. “All farmers are liars.”

It was something I had not thought about. I had been taught to believe that grownups didn't lie.

“I want to send you,” the man told me.

Then, taking an envelope from his pocket, he said, “Take this to Hari. And don't show it to anyone else.”

He folded it neatly and slipped it in the breast pocket of my shirt. He buttoned up the pocket himself, saying, “If you show it to anyone else I will know.”

“Then we will come and get you,” said the one with the scar. “And get your mother and your father. Get your brother and sister too.”

“I have no sisters.”

“We'll get them too,” he said.

“I won't show it to anyone,” I promised.

“And you must not tell anyone about us.”

“I won't.”

“Not even your best friend.”

“Not even my best friend.”

The one with the scar exerted pressure on my neck. It was beginning to hurt.

“We'll cut out your tongue,” he said. “How would you like that?”

“Not,” I said.

“Good,” said the one with the gun. “Don't forget we are watching you.”

I lingered only long enough to find my school bag in the bush where I had hidden it. Then I did not stop running until I got out of the forest.

Three

THE RIVER ENTERED
Bwana Ruin's farm from the east, in a more or less direct course from the mountains to the grasslands in the west. The laborers' village was the first thing it touched. Then, glancing right, the river flowed past Bwana Ruin's vast orchards and carried on into the plain.

The village consisted of several dozen round mud and thatch huts flung over ten acres of banana trees and vegetable gardens. It was an old village, turned into a maze of winding footpaths among old huts, grain stores and broken latrines. Strangers easily got lost there. Bwana Ruin often promised to demolish it.

My mother's hut was on the far side of the village, close to Bwana Ruin's farmhouse, where he lived alone with his old wife.

I rushed home to find Hari and give him the letter from the people of the forest. As I came up to my mother's hut, she came out with a bucket, thrust it in my hands and ordered me to go down to the river to fetch water.

“Where is Hari?” I asked her.

Hari was still at work, she told me. I had forgotten it was a working day and Hari would be at the dairy skimming Bwana Ruin's milk.

“I have a letter for him,” I said.

“A letter? A letter from where?”

I hesitated.

“Give it to me,” she said. “I'll give it to Hari when he comes home.”