The River Between (15 page)

She took his hand and pressed it slightly. Waiyaki's blood warmed and he felt as if he would be carried away by the waves of desire and emotion that shook his whole being.

“Oh, Teacher. I have always loved you. I'll go where you go. Don't leave me now.”

Waiyaki held her against his breast. Then they slowly descended the Makuyu ridge till they came to their sacred ground.

“Let's sit down,” he whispered. They lay on the grass and the Honia river went on with its throb. Waiyaki and Nyambura did not hear it, for a stronger throb, heartrending, was sweeping away their bodies. Their souls joined into one stillness; so still that their breathing seemed to belong to another world, apart from them.

When they rose to go a new strength had come to Waiyaki. Even Kinuthia, who had gone back to wait for him in the hut, was surprised more at the brightness on their faces than at the fact of their being together. Indeed Waiyaki felt his yearning soul soothed by the healing presence of this girl. Yet he knew that he would be forced to make a choice, a choice between the girl and the tribe. Tonight he felt he had something to say to the people. But he did not know what. He wanted a rest; time to make a silent inquiry into his heart. His father's image came back to him vividly. He remembered that journey into the sacred grove. And he said loudly, “I shall go there tomorrow.”

“Where?” Kinuthia asked.

Waiyaki was shaken into the present by that question. He felt he could not explain his journey even to Kinuthia. Yet just now he felt his father's presence everywhere in the room, in the darkness outside. This feeling was as real to him as the presence of Nyambura, who had fallen asleep on his bed. She was very exhausted but she felt at peace.

“To the hill south of Kameno. To the sacred grove.”

“To the sacred grove?”

“Yes, it is a long story.” And now he told Kinuthia about it all, the journey with his father, the ancient prophecy and his bewilderment at its meaning. And Kinuthia sat mouth open; a new veneration for Waiyaki grew upon him. It was as if Waiyaki was a revelation, a thing not of this earth.

“Look here, Kinuthia,” Waiyaki said after a long silence. “Do something for me. Tomorrow I must speak to the people just before the sunset. Call a meeting at Honia river on the initiation ground. It is flat there. Get some people to help you spread the news. On every hill. I'll fight it out with Kabonyi in the open. For, Kinuthia, I cannot run away. New thoughts are coming into my mind. Things I might have done and said. Oh, there are so many things I did not know. I had not seen that the new awareness wanted expression at a political level. Education for an oppressed people is not all. But I must think. I must be alone.”

Still they talked far into the night and Kinuthia listened to Waiyaki's plans and felt himself inspired to new efforts and transported to new heights.

“I will never leave you!” he cried. “Whatever the others do, I will be with you all the way.”

“Thank you, Kinuthia. Let us wait until tomorrow.”

He felt a dull pain inside his heart. He was weary. The country was below him again, but it did not have so much power over him as when he had stood there, a child, with his father. The sun was up and he could not see Kerinyaga. And the sacred grove seemed to be no more than ordinary bush clustering around the fig tree. But there was something strange about the tree. It was still huge and there was a firmness about it that would forever defy time; that indeed seemed to scorn changing weather. And Waiyaki wondered how many people before him had stood there, where he now was, how many had indeed come to pay homage to this tree, the symbol of a people's faith in a mysterious power ruling the universe and the destinies of men.

And now he felt that mystery gradually enveloping him. But for him now the mystery was that of darkness clouding his heart. That was where in his loneliness he struggled with strange forces, forces that seemed to be destroying him. He wondered why he had come here. He wondered what answers he had hoped to find to the unformulated questions in his mind. Even Nyambura had faded from the reality around him and was no longer a consolation. For the reality around him, around his heart, was one of despair because he was aware that he was fighting against forces that he himself did not understand; forces that he had felt in the air all over the country. And he was afraid. Perhaps he was running away from what he did not understand because he feared. What had he awakened in the hills? And he remembered Kinuthia telling him: Your name will be your ruin.

Waiyaki stared at the country below him as if he were seeing nothing. Below the calm of the hills were strange stirrings.

What had brought all this trouble? Waiyaki blamed himself. He felt that things had really begun to go wrong from the time of the great meeting, the time when they all declared him the Teacher. Since then the rifts between the various factions had widened and the attempt by the Kiama to burn people's houses and their threat to Joshua and his followers were all an expression of that widened gulf. Perhaps he should not have resigned from the Kiama, he told himself over and over again. What if he had made his stand clear at that meeting? That was now a lost opportunity and he had to reckon with the present. Still he wondered if he had not betrayed the tribe; the tribe he had meant to unite; the tribe he had wanted to save; the people he had wanted to educate, giving them all the benefits of the white man's coming.

For Waiyaki knew that not all the ways of the white man were bad. Even his religion was not essentially bad. Some good, some truth shone through it. But the religion, the faith, needed washing, cleaning away all the dirt, leaving only the eternal. And that eternal that was the truth had to be reconciled to the traditions of the people. A people's traditions could not be swept away overnight. That way lay disintegration. Such a tribe would have no roots, for a people's roots were in their traditions going back to the past, the very beginning, Gikuyu and Mumbi. A religion that took no count of people's way of life, a religion that did not recognize spots of beauty and truths in their way of life, was useless. It would not satisfy. It would not be a living experience, a source of life and vitality. It would only maim a man's soul, making him fanatically cling to whatever promised security, otherwise he would be lost. Perhaps that was what was wrong with Joshua. He had clothed himself with a religion decorated and smeared with everything
white.
He renounced his past and cut himself away from those life-giving traditions of the tribe. And because he had nothing to rest upon, something rich and firm on which to stand and grow, he had to cling with his hands to whatever the missionaries taught him promised future.

Waiyaki wondered if he himself fitted anywhere. Did Kabonyi? Which of the two was the messiah, the man who was to bring hope in salvation to a troubled people? But how could a man be a savior when he himself had already lost that contact with the past?

Muthoni had tried. Hers was a search for salvation for herself. She had the courage to attempt a reconciliation of the many forces that wanted to control her. She had realized her need, the need to have a wholesome and beautiful life that enriched you and made you grow. His father, too, had tried to reconcile the two ways, not in himself, but through his son. Waiyaki was a product of that attempt. Yes, in the quietness of the hill, Waiyaki had realized many things. Circumcision of women was not important as a physical operation. It was what it did inside a person. It could not be stopped overnight. Patience and, above all, education, were needed. If the white man's religion made you abandon a custom and then did not give you something else of equal value, you became lost. An attempt at resolution of the conflict would only kill you, as it did Muthoni.

Waiyaki now thought it was time to go. The sacred grove had not lit the way for him. He did not quite know where he was going or what he really wanted to tell his people. He was still in the dark. He remembered Nyambura and wondered how she was feeling, being in his hut. For a moment he was gripped by terror and hated himself for having left the hut. What if they had come and taken her by force? What if Joshua had gone to report him at the Government Post? He again wondered if he should not run away and, as he descended the hill, he cast his eyes beyond. He had a vision of many possibilities and opportunities there, away from the hills. Maybe one day he would go there. Maybe one day he would join forces with the men from Muranga, Kiambu and Nyeri and with one voice tell the white man “Go!” And all at once Waiyaki realized what the ridges wanted. All at once he felt more forcefully than he had ever felt before the shame of a people's land being taken away, the shame of being forced to work on those same lands, the humiliation of paying taxes for a government that you knew nothing about.

Yes. The Kiama was right. People wanted action now. The stirrings in the hills were an awakening to the shame and humiliation of their condition. Their isolation had been violated. But what action was needed? What had he to do now? How could he organize people into a political organization when they were so torn with strife and disunity? Now he knew what he would preach if he ever got another chance: education for unity. Unity for political freedom. For a time this vision made his heart glow with expectation and new hope. He quickened his descent, wishing to come to the people and communicate this new vision. Education, Unity, Political Freedom. And then came the doubt. What if they should ask him to give up Nyambura? What if—he did not want to think about it. He would fight for unity and Nyambura was an integral part of that battle. If he lost Nyambura, he too would be lost. He was fighting for his salvation.

 • • • 

Many people had come to the meeting ground. There were women and children and old men who were bewildered by the urgent call they had received from Kinuthia's messengers. And they came because they wanted to hear what their Teacher had to say and because they had heard things which they could not believe. Most still clung to the vision of the Teacher they knew; the Teacher whom they trusted, in whom they believed, a man they could always follow, anywhere. How could they believe that he would betray them? How could they believe this story about his marrying an uncircumcised girl, a daughter of Joshua, the enemy of the people? Waiyaki had awakened them to new visions, new desires, new aspirations. He had restored to them their dignity as a tribe and he had given them the white man's education when the missionaries had wanted to deny them that wisdom. Waiyaki had been too clever for them. He had taken the oath of loyalty to the purity of the tribe. That had been an example to all. Could he then go against the oath, could he?

They waited patiently, the sun's heat on their bare heads; sweat rolled down their backs. And still they waited. And Kabonyi was there and the elders of the Kiama and the young men of the tribe. And all waited, waited for Waiyaki to come. They nursed their secret thoughts to their hearts and they looked forward to his arrival and they knew that this was the day of trial. Initiation day would be tomorrow on this very ground and tonight would be the night of singing and dancing. Joshua and his followers would sing tonight for their Christ was going to be born tonight. But at the meeting nobody sung, nobody danced. They waited to hear what their Teacher would say.

And Kabonyi and some of the elders sat in a group separately and trembled with their secret knowledge. Let the people wait. Kabonyi was determined to win or die. For he knew that his victory was the victory of the tribe; that tribe that was now threatened by Waiyaki. And he hated Waiyaki intensely and identified this hatred with the wrath of the tribe against impurity and betrayal. To him then, this was not a personal struggle. It was a continuation of that struggle that had always existed between Makuyu and Kameno. For leaders from Kameno had failed; they had only betrayed people. The ridges would now rise and cry vengeance. Kabonyi felt himself the instrument of that vengeance. He was the savior for whom the people waited. Not that Kabonyi knew exactly where he would lead the people. For he too was grappling with forces awakened in the people. How could he understand that the people did not want to move backward, that the ridges no longer desired their isolation? How could he know that the forces that drove people to yearn for a better day tomorrow, that now gave a new awareness to the people, were like demons, sweeping the whole country, as Mugo had said, from one horizon touching the sea to the other horizon touching the water?

The sun was going down and people stirred with impatience. Some people, among whom were a group of Joshua's followers, stood on the hill. They had not yet descended. Miriamu was there. She too thought something was going to happen and she wept for her daughter; and she wept too because she knew she was weak and she could not do anything. And suddenly the people who stood on the hills or up the slope saw big yellow flames emanated by the setting sun. The flames seemed near and far and the trees and the country were caught in the flames. They feared.

Kinuthia too feared and for a time he had a momentary glimpse of Waiyaki and Nyambura caught in those flames. And he cried and blamed himself because he had failed Waiyaki. Nyambura had been stolen from Waiyaki's hut and he knew that she was in the hands of Kabonyi and the Kiama. How could he communicate this to Waiyaki? How would Waiyaki take it? He decided to let Waiyaki face the crowd and fight the battle unhampered by his fear for Nyambura. Then from somewhere people began to sing: “He has gone—traitor.” Kinuthia trembled and wondered if Waiyaki would not turn up. If he did not, then Kinuthia's life would be in danger, for the people's wrath would turn against him. He sweated with fear as the people cried “Seek him out.” It was Kabonyi and his followers who were shouting “traitor.”

The crowd was big and more people were coming. Then there was a whisper which made everybody rise in excitement: “The Teacher! The Teacher!” Then they sat down again and let Waiyaki pass, his head and broad shoulders indeed caught against the yellow beams that passed through the trees. And he looked powerful and beautiful and they were tense on both sides of the Honia river. Great hush fell over the land as he strode toward a raised piece of ground where the Kiama sat, where his destiny would be decided.