It was difficult to think that Priscilla had ever been young. She was all bones and corners. Her voice was sharp and her ears sharp, and though her eyes were a bit blurred she never seemed to forget which day it was, or whose turn it was, or what everyone was called, the baptismal name and the birth-given name and the mother-of name for those who had been lucky and the place names they were attached to. Priscilla, Wairimu thought, had never grown: there was no place where her skin was too big for her, where breasts or features spilt out over the bone structure, no hidden interior self. But Wairimu still enclosed within herself the springy footstep and the ancient ornaments, the gleaming rounded skin and the halo of sunlight encircling the young man with his shirt and shorts, his wide-brimmed hat and sandals, his knowledge of the world and other ways and women. That had been the start of it all, of her going away, because after this revelation of what he shared with her she could not face either the shameful disclosure of the wedding day or the cloying sameness of all the days that would follow. The forest was no longer thick enough to hide divergence. She had to go away.
Rahel had gone from them in all but name. She had not spoken for two weeks now and could not hold a cup to her lips. She lay there, long and black and gaunt, her eyes sometimes following the others about. It was not her first withdrawal, but her longest. They mostly left Matron to feed her, for they were blamed if they made a mess, spilling things or letting her play with the food forgotten in her mouth. But Rahel too was wandering in the woods, gathering firewood with her friends, and as they found themselves far away from the homestead they sang louder and more wildly, practising among themselves the marriage songs and other forbidden chants, which they would not dare to utter within the elders’ hearing and yet were expected to know and perform when the occasion arrived. One of the older girls had even seen the fearful twin dance performed and demonstrated, as far as she could remember, the women’s part, until far from the usual path they came upon the dead tree and were struck suddenly quiet, alarmed by the silvery replica of living branches and the vivid green of moss. They turned away quickly, breaking no branch, but these days the image of the dead tree lay before Rahel’s eyes and she clung to it for its symmetry, its detachment and its total recall.
Some of the old ladies said they dreamed a lot. Perhaps this was what they meant. For Luo people, Rahel used patiently to explain to the others, a dream was no such flickering thing as they described, although there might be fancies that turned into dreams. When someone brought a message to you he came, not just seemed to come. He came to claim what was a dead person’s due – a chicken, a change of name, relationship with a child soon to be born – and even if you did not know him yourself, the elders would recognise who he was from your description and act on the message.
Suppose it were a living person, Priscilla had asked. And then does he appear at the age when he died, or younger? Does he speak in known words? Do you see him in your bedroom or somewhere else? Do other people sleeping there see him too? Really, Priscilla should have been a European, asking so many questions. It was all on account of having gone to school so young and worked all those years in big, chilly houses, where the comfort of the cooking fire never penetrated to the upper air and chairs, shiny to the touch, kept you at a distance from other people.
Rahel could no longer answer these questions. She knew what she saw – and this time she saw the girls, young and noisy and mischievous. Her tongue had somehow got out of control since that night she had seen her father’s eldest brother as she remembered him long ago, his thin shoulders bare, the little circles of gold gleaming in his ears (for he was a peaceable man and had bound himself to the self-restraint of the ear-rings as early as she remembered him). His fingers were pulling and working at the sisal rope. He had brought her no message, claimed no child – for her daughters had died long since and their daughters might, for all she knew, be married in distant places – only he had looked at her kindly, plaiting the rope, plaiting the rope, and from that time a chill had fallen upon her limbs and she moved with difficulty. Well, in Nairobi in June and July it could be chilly, but it was only when she saw the dead tree that she remembered the shadowed thickets that were always cold. It was many years since those places had been broken down for firewood and the land put under the hoe: nowadays, at home, you never wished for a heavier blanket unless in the midst of the rain. Of course now you were clothed. Yet in those days the stout calico petticoats the girls got from their own chickens, or as a present with the first instalment of dowry, seemed to their mothers finicky and quite unnecessary. A nice Luo girl was not expected to go in for these new-fangled fashions.
Unable to rouse her, friends pulled the charcoal brazier nearer to her bed and crept away.
The man clanked along the road and the old ladies called one another to come and see. After all, a fine figure of a man, crazy or not, is worth a second look at any age. This one was much more striking than those who appear on Sundays in the uniform of a three-piece suit, collar and tie, as like to one another as the more splendidly dressed waiters and ushers who would move you on outside the big hotels where tourists sometimes offered shillings if you could get close enough, looking pathetic and detached.
He jangled as he walked. It was not in fact the row of medals – they were cut, actually, from the silver foil of cocoa tins and suspended by safety pins and laces from a length of cellulose packing tape – but pieces of metal suspended from the belt that made the noise and occasionally hit against a jerky knee, but most of the old ladies were not able to see that clearly. The man held his head erect and marched with exaggerated movements, his lips muttering directions to himself, ‘one, two, one, two’, when he was not speaking aloud. Coloured cords streamed from the shoulders of his khaki shirt and a piece of tinsel glinted bravely on top of the peaked cap adorned with red and green beads. The tatty trousers were tucked into well-shined ankle boots, and a small cane in his right hand emulated the movements of a newly commissioned officer, anxious lest he leave the baton behind.
A crowd of small children shouted greetings all around but kept their distance after the man had wheeled about with a meaningful tap of the baton on the iron bars. As he got into his stride again, Wairimu minced to the roadside and broke into a dance step, tightening the wrapper girlishly round her hips.
The man stopped and roared out a dozen obscenities in English. The children giggled. Younger women turned their backs and ostentatiously stooped to resume their washing. A young man stood still and saluted, then continued walking in the opposite direction. The words were too familiar to the older parts of eastern Nairobi to retain much of their original force. Some of them were untranslatable and therefore retained an aura of quaintness and sophistication. For some of the old ladies who were new to the town they had no literal meaning; for others they stirred memories which were better suppressed in their present, respected surroundings.
‘Women have done me no good,’ shouted the military man in Swahili. Mama Chungu remembered him from the days she used to hold a begging-bowl outside the mosque. But they were not allowed to beg once they had entered the Refuge, and each one made herself into a different person to fit the situation just as she had done on marriage, motherhood, widowhood and time and time again, conscious at each stage of identity behind the expectant, narrow hips, the swelling breasts, the symbols of mourning and the simulation of distress. The man used to parade in town those days – he still did, for all she knew – wanting to flaunt his condition to the world and so using these foreign tongues and manners instead of the intimate birth language that would allow one to divine and assuage his grief. She did the same. They were all masked here for the sake of sharing, since they had been brought up to see sharing as the ultimate goal and there remained this sisterhood of constraint to share with. If he had been a real soldier in a real war, there would exist a kind of brotherhood, not needing to be sought out with dirty words and toy medals. It was like hearing on the radio a search for missing persons – fifteen years old, one metre 55, wearing a white school blouse and a grey skirt, black shoes, white socks – as though one could be found by sharp Swahili voices rather than by following the trail of home and blood.
The man made a derisory gesture and continued his march. Wairimu giggled. Some of her friends mocked her stiff movements. Priscilla pursed her lips at loose behaviour. Sophia was reminded of beni processions long ago, Kingi competing with Scotchi or Kilungu. But they did it so much better