The Mzungu Boy (3 page)

“l can't,” I said. “They said I must not talk to anyone about it.”

“Who said?” she asked.

“The people who gave it to me.”

“Which people?”

I thought about it. Surely “anyone” could not possibly include my own mother. After all, she gave them food when they came to our door at night.

“Give it to me,” she said. “I'll keep it for him.”

“No,” I said, deciding to play it safe. “I'll give it to him myself.”

“You go fetch the water,” she said, taking my school bag. “After that I want you to chop some firewood.”

That was the way it was. Chore after chore after chore. I preferred the peace and the solitude of the duck pool.

I took the bucket and ran behind the hut to the path that led to the river. If I ran fast enough I might be able to chop the wood and still catch Hari at the dairy.

The villagers fetched their domestic water a hundred yards down the river where the water was dammed with driftwood, forming a deep, dark pool. You stood on the stones by the edge of the pool and immersed your bucket or water gourds without getting your feet wet. Often women took their utensils to the river to wash, so the fish in the dam were well fed and very big. Bwana Ruin fished there for trout. When he was fishing we were not allowed to disturb him and were forced to go elsewhere for our water.

Bwana Ruin was not around. Instead a strange white boy was fishing. He was about my height and build and had hair the color of straw. He was dressed in gray shorts and a jacket and wore hard leather boots like Bwana Ruin's and green knee-high socks.

“Hallo,” the boy called out cheerfully.

“Hallo,” I said, looking out for Bwana Ruin.

Bwana Ruin was nowhere about. The white boy was fishing with Bwana Ruin's rod, which was twice as long as he was, and he had trouble keeping the line under control. Nevertheless, he had caught one big fish and two small ones, and he called me over to show them to me.

“Lovely, aren't they?” he said proudly.

I had seen bigger catches by Bwana Ruin, but I nodded and said something friendly. Close up the boy was a little shorter than I was, and he had round, red cheeks. His eyes were bright.

“Not bad, is it?” he asked. “I bet you couldn't catch anything as good.”

“No,” I said. “What's your name?”

“Nigel,” he said. “What's yours?”

Just then he felt a nibble on the bait and forgot about me. He gripped the rod with both hands, nervously jerking it back and forth.

“Wait,” I said. “Let it swallow the bait.”

But he was so excited he hardly heard me. He yanked the rod. The hook shot out of the water without the fish, whipped dangerously over our heads and flew into the mokoe tree above us.

There it rested in the gnarled old branches.

“Oh, dear,” said the boy.

He tugged hard on the rod. The hook bit deeper into the tree and the line became hopelessly entangled in the branches. He yanked impatiently on the line. It was obvious that he had not done much fishing before today.

“Wait,” I told him. “You will break the line that way. Let me show you.”

He gave me the rod. I braced myself as I had seen Bwana Ruin do and tugged gently. I swung the rod this way and that, varying the pressure and direction. But the boy had made a complete mess of it by now and the hook was embedded in a branch fifteen feet above our heads.

There was only one way to get it down.

“Hold here.” I handed him back the rod. “I'll climb the tree.”

“Good idea,” he said.

I spat into my palms and rubbed them together to make them stronger, the way men did before tackling impossible tasks. Then I hugged the tree trunk with my legs and arms and started to climb.

I had been climbing trees as long as I could remember and I had no difficulty at all getting to the branch where the hook was stuck. I released the line and threw the hook down. Then I looked around.

I had never been up this particular tree and was surprised at the view. I could see all the way over the orchards to Bwana Ruin's house. Father was in the kitchen garden picking tomatoes. Mamsab Ruin sat on the veranda reading a book while Salt and Pepper, Bwana Ruin's very fierce dogs, lay by the door sunning themselves. Outside the dairy, past Bwana Ruin's house, a line of children waited to receive their daily ration of skimmed milk. Far out on the plains was the airstrip, the black-and-white wind sock moving lazily in the wind.

The tree I sat in was thick with hooks. There were dozens of beautifully feathered hooks, a tribute to Bwana Ruin's impatience, and numerous crude ones made from safety pins, which the villagers lost when they went poaching at night. I decided to leave them all where they were until I could come back alone and fetch them. They would fetch me a good price from the village boys who were great fishermen, even though it was strictly forbidden.

The branch where I sat was heavy with fruit. I picked a few of the deep purple fruit and ate one. It was rough to the tongue but very sweet, so I decided to stay on the tree and have some more.

“What are you eating?” the white boy asked.

“Fruit,” I told him. “Have some.”

I threw him a few. He tasted one, spat it out and threw the rest into the river. Then he went back to fishing.

I was disappointed. I had expected the white boy to love the taste of wild fruit like any other boy. Then I remembered he had a whole orchard of exotic fruit to pick from.

I crawled farther on, eating my way along the branch overhanging the pool.

“Do you like to fish?” he asked me.

“Very much,” I said.

“Would you like to catch one?”

“No,” I told him. “Fishing is not allowed.”

Bwana Ruin mercilessly whipped any boy caught fishing in his river. The white boy could not understand how the river belonged to Bwana Ruin, so I explained it to him.

“This farm belongs to Bwana Ruin,” I told him. “Don't you know that?”

He knew who owned the farm but not the river.

“The river also,” I told him. “Everything belongs to Bwana Ruin.”

I told him how, just the week before, the forest guards had caught some boys fishing and handed them over to Bwana Ruin. Bwana Ruin had whipped the boys raw and threatened to fire their fathers.

My father would kill me if I ever lost him his job.

Where he came from, the white boy told me, the rivers were for everyone. Anyone could fish anywhere, anytime.

“Where do you come from?” I asked.

He told me he came from Yorkshire.

“Where is that?” I asked.

“England.”

I knew England. Everything we used was made in England. From the pencils and the rubbers we used in school to the hoes we used in the gardens. They were all made in England. The first English words I had learned to read were Made in England. But I had no idea where England was and suggested we might go fishing there one day.

Nigel laughed.

“We can't. It's a long way from here.”

“Farther than the Loldaiga hills?” I asked, pointing at the blue hills on the horizon.

“Farther,” he said.

“Farther than the place where the earth meets the sky?” I asked.

“Farther,” he said. “You can't walk there.”

“How did you come here then?”

“I came by air,” he said. “I came in an airplane.”

“You have an airplane?”

I would not have been at all surprised if he had an airplane. To many of us village children, white people were strange creatures who were allowed many impossibilities. Many white farmers in Laikipia owned private planes and private airstrips. Bwana Ruin himself owned an airstrip, and sometimes white people came by plane to see him.

But no, the white boy had not come in his own airplane. He had come in an airliner. A big, big plane that belonged to the government.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“It's in Nairobi,” he told me.

I knew Nairobi from my books in school, but it was the first time I had met someone who had ever been there. I felt foolish and ignorant in front of this white boy.

“Have you ever caught a warthog?” I asked.

“A warthog? What's that?”

Now we were even as far as airplanes and warthogs went.

“It's a very big animal,” I told him.

I had never caught a warthog either, though I had hunted them. But I did not tell him this.

His parents were back in England, he told me. He had come to stay with his grandparents for the summer holidays. Up until then, I had assumed he had come to the farm with a visiting family. It took me a moment to understand that by grandparents he meant Bwana and Mamsab Ruin.

“ln that case,” I said, “we can't go hunting together. Bwana Ruin is very
kali
, very fierce.”

At that moment he got another bite on the bait, and we forgot about Bwana Ruin. Again he was too hasty in whipping the line out of the water, and it ended up in the tree next to where I lay. I released it and dropped it back into the river.

“I think I had better stay up here,” I said, “until you finish.” So I crawled along the branch and ate some more fruit.

Then my mother showed up. She had the habit of turning up suddenly whenever I started to forget my chores, and this time I had completely forgotten about the water I had come to fetch for her.

She stormed down to the river bank calling my name. I did not know whether to jump into the river or remain where I was. I feared her tongue-lashing as much as I dreaded my father's whip.

I remained where I was.

She found the bucket on the bank and stopped. She looked uncertainly from the bucket to the river, no doubt wondering if I had drowned. I lay in the tree hoping she would take the bucket and go home, leave me to explain later.

She was about to do exactly that when the white boy spoiled it all.

“Hallo,” he said. “Are you looking for something?”

My mother did not understand a word of English. She had no idea the white boy was talking to her. Then he looked up the tree and asked me, “What does she want?”

I kept very still. My mother followed his eyes up the tree and discovered me where I was, doing my best to become invisible.

“What are you doing in the tree?” she asked me.

“Nothing.”

“Come down from there at once,” she ordered.

In all the time I had been up that tree, I had not for a moment stopped to think how I would eventually get back on the ground. I was lying on a huge, thick branch, facing away from the trunk. There was no room to turn around, and moving backwards was just as impossible.

“Did you hear me?” my mother shouted. “I said come down here now.”

I rushed to obey. Halfway through the maneuver, I slipped and went crashing through the branches into the pool. Cold, dark water engulfed me.

As I went under, I heard Nigel call out. I had never been in water higher than my waist, and I yelled out in fear. My mother could not swim either and I would certainly have drowned if it had not been for the white boy. Nigel jumped in clothes and all and dragged me out of the pool.

As I clambered onto the bank, gasping for air and spitting out water, my mother pulled me up and gave me a thorough shaking.

“What happened to the water I sent you to fetch?” she demanded.

Before I could answer, she thrust the bucket in my hands and said, “I want you home with the water before I get there.”

Then she turned and stormed away.

I had no time to thank the white boy. I grabbed the bucket, dipped it into the river and rushed after my mother. By the time she got home, I was right there behind her, panting and shivering from the cold.

“Get the firewood!” she ordered.

I ran behind the hut. She had chopped the wood herself, after waiting for nearly an hour, and all I had to do was bring it in and arrange it neatly by the fireplace. That was quickly done.

“Anything else?” I asked eagerly.

“Why?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?”

“Nowhere,” I said.

When she did not mention any other chore, I sneaked out of the hut and ran back to the river.

Halfway there I ran into my father.

“You,” he barked.

I stopped so suddenly I almost fell over him. He was dressed in his cook's uniform — white trousers, a white vest and a green apron. On his head, like a huge white pot, was the cook's hat.

“Where are you going?” he asked me.

“To the river,” I said.

“To the river?” he said loudly. “To do what at the river?”

“Nothing.”

I had learned, the hard way, that the right reply was not always the safest reply. But I was not allowed to lie. So “nothing,” “nowhere” and “I don't know” were my safest replies.

“You are wet,” he said scoldingly.

“I fell in the river.”

He rapped me on the head with his knuckles, a practice I found painful and insulting.

“Didn't I tell you not to go fishing?” he asked me.

“I didn't go fishing,” I told him. “I went to fetch water.”

“Are you lying to me?” he asked.

“No, Father,” I said.

He seemed to believe me. He lifted his tall hat and took a paper bag from under it.

“Take this to your mother,” he said, giving it to me. “Run.”

I ran like a rabbit. After taking the package home, I followed a different route down to the fishermen's path and back to the pool.

It was nearly dark now and the white boy had called it a day. He had caught a second big fish and was hooking it on a forked stick to carry home. He hooked the two small fish on another forked stick and gave it to me.

“Take these,” he said.

“Take them where?” I asked.

“To your cook,” he said.

My cook? I did not have a cook, I told him. My mother did all the cooking and she hated fish. I was not even supposed to eat fish.