The River Between (9 page)

Marioshoni, as Waiyaki's school was called, was well known in the country. Already it had a history. It was the first people's own school to be built since the break with Siriana. It had been Waiyaki's idea and even now he could not understand fully how his idea had borne fruit so quickly. He saw it as something beyond himself, something ordained by fate. Event had followed event in quick succession, quickening the rhythm of life in the hills. There had been the harvest; then Muthoni's death; the tightening of Siriana's Mission laws to the extent of not admitting to the school those who were the children of darkness, whose parents had not renounced the whole concept of circumcision. Waiyaki could still remember the excitement and the tension created along the ridges by these events.

His father's death had almost numbed him. He could not tell why, but Chege's death, though not unexpected, came as a shock to him. It seemed unfair that Chege should have died at that particular time. He should have lived longer. And Waiyaki had gone on like a man drugged, not knowing what to think or do. He had all of a sudden become a grown man. He was now on his own. It was while he was in this mood that the idea of schools had come to him. But what could he do, he being so young? And what had happened meant that he would never go back to Siriana. His time to work and serve the people had come.

In starting self-help in education, Waiyaki had seen it as a kind of mission. It was a vision which he followed with hope and passion. He traveled from ridge to ridge, all over the country of the sleeping lions. He found a willing people. Yes, the ridges were beginning to awake. The trees, the birds and the paths he trod, all knew him, knew a man destined to serve his country.

But here was not the only place where this sort of thing was happening. This new spirit simultaneously surged all over the Gikuyu country, from Kerinyaga to Kabete.

Schools grew up like mushrooms. Often a school was nothing more than a shed hurriedly thatched with grass. And there they stood, symbols of people's thirst for the white man's secret magic and power. Few wanted to live the white man's way, but all wanted this thing, this magic. This work of building together was a tribute to the tribe's way of cooperation. It was a determination to have something of their own making, fired by their own imagination.

But it was more than this. Circumcision was an important ritual to the tribe. It kept people together, bound the tribe. It was at the core of the social structure, and a something that gave meaning to a man's life. End the custom and the spiritual basis of the tribe's cohesion and integration would be no more. The cry was up. Gikuyu Karinga. Keep the tribe pure. Tutikwenda Irigu. It was a soul's cry, a soul's wish.

The schools were soon overflowing with children, hungry for this thing. A class held many children crammed together, while their teachers, any who could be grabbed from Siriana, sat in front and the expectant little eyes looked up to them, wanting to drink in this learning. And mothers and fathers waited, expecting their children to come home full of learning and wisdom. Parents would feel proud, very proud, when a son came in the evening with a tear-washed face.

“Beaten? There, don't cry. You are a man, and
he
is a
teacher,
you know.”

“That teacher is good. He beats them hard.” And, to the teacher passing through the village—

“Hey, Teacher!”

“Yes?”

“Beat them hard. We want them to learn.”

The children caught the enthusiasm of their parents. Perhaps they saw they were the hope and the glory of the tribe. But alongside these great changes there were some people who continued as of old, unbending to one way or the other.

Waiyaki was the headmaster of Marioshoni. He went there in the morning and went back home in the evening. It was nearly always like that. He liked it. The walk gave him time to think about many of the problems connected with education. He wanted to do a lot for all, and serve faithfully. Yet the power of hate and the ever-widening rift, generated, as it were, by Muthoni's death, was enough to worry anyone.

There were the Christians led by Joshua, men of Joshua as they were sometimes called. Their home? Makuyu. Then there were the people of the tribe, who had always been against the Mission and its faith. Kameno was, as it were, their home or base. The other ridges more or less followed this pattern. And so the ancient rivalry continued, sometimes under this or that guise. It was all confusion building up and spreading under the outward calm of the ridges. Where did people like Waiyaki stand? Had he not received the white man's education? And was this not a part of the other faith, the new faith? The Kameno group was strengthened by the breakaway group led by Kabonyi. Waiyaki felt himself standing outside all this. And at times he felt isolated.

Yet, amidst this isolation, he was proud. He was proud of the small but important role he had played in awakening the hills, the sleeping lions. And inside him he felt vaguely that it would be good to reconcile all these antagonisms.

His role, however, did not satisfy him. He still felt hungry and yearned for something that would fill him whole, a thing that would take possession of the whole of himself. That something seemed beyond him, enmeshed, as he was, in the ways of the land. Waiyaki was now a tall, powerfully built man who struck people as being handsome. Even so this was not the most striking thing about him. It was his eyes. They looked delicately tragic. But they also appeared commanding and imploring. It was his eyes that spoke of that yearning, that longing for something that would fill him all in all.

Sometimes the longing drove him to hard work. Waiyaki was capable of real hard labor. For this and his courageous determination he was liked and admired by the people of the ridges. Maybe the very spirit that was in his father had entered him.

So young. This puzzled people. The young could never be expected to lead or manage something that was big.

“Perhaps it is the white man's learning!” they said.

“No! Do you not remember him as a boy?”

“Yes—always queer—and full of quiet courage.”

“It is the line he descends from. Don't you remember his father?”

“Yes. He was—”

Waiyaki was becoming the pride of the hills and the pride of Kameno. Already they had started calling him the champion of the tribe's ways and life.

He could not sleep. Thin rays of the moon passed through the cracks in the wall into the hut and fell at various spots on the floor. It was no good staring blankly at the hazy darkness in which every object lost its clear edges. Waiyaki wanted to talk to someone. That was what oppressed him: the desire to share his hopes, his yearnings and longings with someone. His plans in education. The desire for assurance and release. Twice he had tried to tell his mother, to ask her something. But each time he stood in front of her and he heard her shaky voice, he found himself talking of irrelevant things. It was strange that the tremor in her voice should set doubts darting in his soul.

After all, what was the longing, what was the something for which he yearned? Did he know it himself? Yet the hopes and desires kept on haunting him. They had followed him all his life.

He did not want to think. But thoughts came and flooded his heart. Strange chapters of his life unfolded before him. His young sister who had died early was the only person with whom he had been intimate. He had loved her, if that sort of closeness could be called love. He thought he loved the hills and their people. But they did not give him that something he could get from her. Then he had been very small, many seasons before his second birth. He wondered why he remembered that time. But she was dead. And death was the end of everything, on this earth. After you were buried, you turned into a spirit. Waiyaki wondered if his sister was a spirit. A young good spirit. Was she watching him? He turned round, rather frightened. He felt guilty.

Waiyaki was superstitious. He believed the things that the people of the ridges believed. Siriana Mission had done nothing effective to change this. His father had warned him against being contaminated by the ways of the white man. Yet he sometimes wondered. Was the education he was trying to spread in the ridges not a contamination?

He wanted to sleep. From side to side he wriggled on his bed, trying to close his eyes and shut away these thoughts that would not let him alone. He thought: There is something unexplainable in the coming of the white man. He had found no resistance in the hills. Now he had penetrated into the heart of the country, spreading his influence. This influence could be disruptive. Muthoni had died on the high altar of this disruption. She had died with courage, probably still trying to resolve the conflict within herself in an attempt to reach the light. Since her death everything had gone from bad to worse, and probably conflicting calls and loyalties strove within the hearts of many. Not many were like Muthoni in courage. Waiyaki wondered where he was. Was he trying to create order and bring light in the dark?

The image of his sister, that of Muthoni and many others followed each other across his mind in quick succession; shadows that had no concrete form; shadows that came and went; sometimes merging, forming nothing. Then, for one moment, his life became one white blur. But only for a second. Then came the mist, dark with no definition. The clear edges of life had gone. He lay still, a little frightened, not knowing what to think or how to find a way out.

The mist began to fade, slowly. The edges seemed to be forming. He could now see the outline of a shape coming into being through the thinning mist. Waiyaki waited for it to melt away into nothingness but it did not. The shape remained there, fixed, and he could not drive it away. He peered at it and for a time was fascinated by it. It was the shape of a woman and he could not make out who she was.

Even this too vanished. And still he could not sleep. It was no good sitting in bed, staring into the hazy darkness.

He got out of bed and it creaked as he stood up. He put on his clothes, quietly, with a slight inner agitation, an excitement of a lover thinking of the impending meeting with his woman. He went out of the hut; he wanted to go to Makuyu to see Kamau, or any other person; a man maybe would understand him, a man to whom he could talk.

The moon was also awake. Her glare was hard and looked brittle. The whole ridge and everything wore a brilliant white. And the little things that in the day appeared ordinary seemed now to be changed into an unearthliness that was both alluring and frightening. Waiyaki listened for voices on the ridge but he could only hear silence. As he moved across the ridge, through small bushes and trees, the silence and the moon's glare seemed to have combined into one mighty force that breathed and had life. Waiyaki wanted to feel at one with the whole creation, with the spirits of his sister and father. He hesitated. Then the oppression in him grew and the desire to talk with someone mounted. The brightness of the moon seemed now soft and tangible and he yielded to her magic. And Waiyaki thrust out his arms and wanted to hold the moon close to his breast because he was sure she was listening and he wanted her cold breath near him. Now his muscles and everything about his body seemed to vibrate with tautness.

Again he was restless and the yearning came back to him. It filled him and shook his whole being so that he felt something in him would burst. Yearning. Yearning. Was life all a yearning and no satisfaction? Was one to live, a strange hollowness pursuing one like a malignant beast that would not let one rest? Waiyaki could not know. Perhaps nobody could ever know. You had just to be. Waiyaki was made to serve the tribe, living day by day with no thoughts of self but always of others. He had now for many seasons been trying to drain himself dry, for the people. Yet this thing still pursued him.

Suddenly he thought he knew what he wanted. Freedom. He wanted to run, run hard, run anywhere. Or hover aimlessly, wandering everywhere like a spirit. Then he would have everything—every flower, every tree—or he could fly to the moon. This seemed possible and Waiyaki raised up his eyes to the sky. His heart bled for her. But he could not run. And he could not fly.

All this while, Waiyaki had been moving. Soon he was down at Honia river. The crickets went on with their incessant shrilling. The quiet throb of the river echoed in his heart. He felt comforted. The water looked strange under the moon. He crossed the river and began climbing up the slope, following the cattle road that would take him to Joshua's village—Makuyu. He would go and see Kamau. It was strange how his life and Kamau's and Kinuthia's seemed to be running on the same road, always affected by the same events. When young, they used to take their herds grazing together. At Siriana, they were together. It was only after Waiyaki's circumcision that they separated for a time. Kamau was initiated a few months after the breakaway. And now they were together at Marioshoni. For a time Waiyaki became rapt in thoughts, about Kamau, Kinuthia and their life at school.

“Oh!” He stopped short and looked up. He had almost collided with a woman. Waiyaki did not speak another word or move. Nyambura was standing in front of him and he felt awkward.

“Oh, is it you?” he said at last, just to break the silence.

“I did not know it was you,” she hastily said and glanced back over the shoulder. “Excuse me, I was lost in my own thoughts.”

Waiyaki had not seen much of Nyambura. And whenever they met they were like strangers. Waiyaki was thinking of a day when he had seen Nyambura coming from Honia river, a huge water-calabash on her back. He had been sitting on a raised bit of ground and he had known she would pass near where he was. At this, he had felt afraid and hidden in the bush. He had watched her trudging up the hill till she had vanished. He had felt relief. That was now many seasons past. He had not thought any more about her. Not until tonight. And all at once, Waiyaki recognized the shape in his mind that had refused to melt into nothingness.

 • • • 

Nyambura still feared her father. She knew that if he saw her standing there he would be angry. She was often lonely. The death of Muthoni had deprived her of the only companion she had ever had. So now she went to the river alone. She went to church alone. Now and then she would strike up a friendship with one or two girls on her ridge. But not one of them could replace Muthoni. Often Nyambura wept when she remembered her and all the places where they had been together, all the secrets they had ever whispered to one another flooding her mind. Then she would feel the pain inside her; the pain wrung dry her heart and no tears would fall. And sometimes she would run to Honia and just stay there watching the flow of the water. Then she would go home feeling at peace. So the river, especially on Sundays, was her companion. She had her own place where she often went. To her father she grew cold. Although she obeyed him in everything and thought that Muthoni had been wrong to disobey a father, she could not fail to connect Joshua with her sister's death. She still thought it a sin to be circumcised. When such a thought came, she wondered if the death had not been a punishment from heaven. But somehow, she could not accuse her sister of sinning.

“Tell Nyambura I see Jesus.” She always remembered these words and she clung to them. She was grateful to Waiyaki for bringing them to her. She wondered about him. She could never understand him. He was educated at the Mission yet he was leading the elements who had broken away from Siriana. Was it not known everywhere that it was this young man who had started the schools? Marioshoni was famous everywhere. Nyambura thought Waiyaki proud. Why, whenever they met he would never stop to talk. Perhaps he feared her father. Not that she wanted anything from him; but somehow, she often longed to discuss Muthoni's death with somebody who would understand. Waiyaki was the only person who had been close to her sister, and Nyambura could never think of Muthoni without Waiyaki coming into the picture. Sometimes she wished he had been on their side. He was so young and strong and knew so much. She would have spoken to him about many things. She rarely met him and whenever they met she always waited for him to make it possible for her to talk to him. But he always passed on after a quick greeting. A queer man. Sometimes she feared him and thought that he refused to talk to her because she was the daughter of Joshua.

 • • • 

Again Nyambura glanced over her shoulder in the direction of her home. She wondered whether to stop or to go on. She heard Waiyaki's voice.

“I am going to see Kamau.”

“And I Johana. My father has sent me to him to tell him to come to our home tonight.”

There was a little silence. Then they both laughed. Waiyaki's heart beat faster.

“Then we can walk together,” he suggested. They moved on slowly. He was at a loss and did not know what to say. He was thinking of this girl. Muthoni had been the cause of their first meeting. Then Nyambura had been a fairly tall girl with well-formed features. Now he could see the woman in her under the bright moonlight.

“What are you going to do there?” she asked.

Waiyaki thought: What am I going to do there? It was then that it occurred to him that he did not want to see Kamau. Not now. He too thought of the people and what they would say now if they saw them walking together. Above them the moon gazed and lit the whole land. Nyambura was not circumcised. But this was not a crime. Something passed between them as two human beings, untainted with religion, social conventions or any tradition.

“Just to see Kamau and the family.”

Nyambura felt a little angry. She thought: He is going to see Kabonyi to discuss their activities.

They came to a place where their ways parted. They stopped there and stood as if held together by something outside themselves. Perhaps it was the magic of the moon that held them both rooted to the spot. Waiyaki wanted to dance the magic and ritual of the moon. His heart beat hard, beating out the darkness. And Nyambura stood there looking as if she were the embodiment of serene beauty, symbolized by the flooding moon and the peace around.

Suddenly Waiyaki felt as if the burning desires of his heart would be soothed if only he could touch her, just touch her hand or her hair. He controlled himself. A strange uneasiness began to creep through him.

“Are you still teaching?”

“Yes—”

“I have not seen your school.”

“You should come some day. And why not tomorrow in the afternoon just after school closes? I could take you round.”

That was a good time. The teachers and the children would have gone. She agreed. They parted without even shaking hands. She left him there, standing, watching her vanishing form. He moved a few paces forward and then abruptly stopped and turned back. He did not feel like seeing anybody else that night.