‘Careful, sister, careful,’ interjected Wairimu. ‘So she was my age. Are you saying that by 1935. . . ?’
‘I am not saying anything bad, Wairimu my sister. I am only saying that Luo women have a certain dignity as they get older, if you take my meaning – and it’s no use swinging your skinny old hips in here. There’s no one to admire you, even if some people have forgotten the meaning of taboos. Not to say what would happen if Matron found you skipping about like you were not a day over forty. Well . . . so I was all right in Uyoma. I got used to preparing fish for the market and getting water straight from the lake, but the harvests seemed poor to me. I got Vitalis first and then two girls before my husband went away to the war, to Somaliland first and then to Burma. We managed, somehow, through the famine of Otonglo and all that, with no money coming in. We had fish and water at least, so the children stayed alive.
‘After the war our husband came home. Everyone was happy. Vitalis was ten years old and wanting to go to school. My daughters were at the toothy stage. My co-wife had a little girl she said was five – I think she juggled with the dates a bit myself. She encouraged me to go on a long visit to my mother about the time she said the baby was due. But I didn’t feel it was my place to say anything, and when our husband came home from the war he didn’t ask any questions either. He was changed, very quiet. He was glad to see the children, especially the boys, asked them questions about fish and plants and different kinds of wood, got them into competition, throwing stones and sticks, making traps. But with us he was reserved. If we asked,
‘ “How do those I-talians talk?”
he would make us laugh,
‘ “Al-la-la-ali-lu-la-it-to-ta,” up and down the scale like Sophia when she gets some of her real Swahili friends together. Or
‘ “How do you know when you meet a general?”
‘ “At – ten – shun. God – say – king – mai God – hel – lo – ol – boi – at the double – cheers!”
(But sergeants’ voices we already knew. We thought he might be a sergeant by now but he didn’t even show us his sleeves.)
‘But if we asked,
‘ “What is the ship like? Did you go in an aeroplane? What do they grow in Somaliland? Were the people in India friendly?” he would just sit silent and tell us,
‘ “You wouldn’t understand. It is better for you not to know. These are not women’s matters.”
‘And on that leave he would sit hour after hour, just looking out from the front of the house or walking down to see the fishing boats and back without answering people’s questions. The little girls asked him once,
‘ “Didn’t you bring us a present back from the war?” (For he had money. He put some in the Post Office at Kisumu and with some he bought meat and bottled beer and sweets for the children, but nothing from those distant places.) And he said to them,
‘ “I have come back to you. No one can ask for more than that.” Later that day he called Vitalis and showed him the big scar on his left thigh, and said to him,
‘ “This is the best present you can get in a war. Do you know that? It is worth two weeks in bed and four weeks of not being directly shot at. It is therefore a very valuable experience.” Vitalis did not understand, but he never forgot. The rest of us never dared ask what caused the wound or whether it hurt: he shut me up angrily when I tried.
‘Then when one of the women from the neighbourhood, a grubby old thing, always making trouble, came to greet us, she started saying to him,
‘ “Don’t you think that Auma is very small for her age? I have been surprised ever since I have been seeing that child. My grandchild whom my son left in the womb when he went to the war and did not come back seems to be much healthier.”
‘She kept on about it and I was trembling for what he might say to Min Auma, but he only fixed his eyes on the old woman.
‘ “Have you ever seen a woman with a big belly and her head shot off?” he asked.
‘She shook her head.
‘ “Can you imagine a hot, marshy place – you may think it is hot here, but really it is hardly warm – and a man who has been dead three days with his feet in the marsh?”
‘ “No, my brother-in-law, these are evil things.”
‘ “You, who love to slither and slide, have you ever marked a trail by counting the dead men near the path, and picked up their weapons to use against their brothers as you go forward?”
‘ “In our custom you let the enemy’s spear lie where it falls, since it can operate only for your enemy’s benefit.”
‘ “So I was taught, but Luo custom is for little Luo wars, fought by the rules for a bit of land or a few cattle. But in a real war, that aims to destroy rather than to get, every weapon is a weapon pleasing to war, and every death is a death pleasing to war, and every fighter is a sacrifice to war. Do you understand me?”
‘ “These words are beyond my understanding, my brother-in-law.”
‘ “Then keep your small concerns for small minds and do not bring your tittle-tattle here to me,” cried my husband, and she scuttled away and never made trouble for us again to my knowledge. But trouble comes and these days we do not think to ask who makes it.
‘We did not have any more children, my co-wife and I. He did not neglect us, but perhaps some strength had gone out of him in the wartime. And even when my father sent word to him of my youngest sister, thinking that such a marriage would strengthen my position in the house and also bring the girl some protection, for she was rather lazy and wayward, not likely to organise a home well, he was not interested at all, but said he would prefer to invest his wealth in the children he already had. Since some of these were mine, of course, my father could not object. Although he was still strong, my father did not go overseas during the second war, but helped to train the young recruits until his time came to retire. There was one time, in 1947, he was sent specially to Gilgil. He said afterwards it was a matter of discipline, something that could not be avoided. That was all he would say, but we could see he was deeply hurt and he did not live long after retiring. He had been in different camps, but my mother never travelled further than Kisumu till the day she died.
‘But it was different in our days. Although my husband professed not to listen to stories about my co-wife, it was only I who went with him to Gilgil so that Vitalis could go to school. I also learned to read there and to look after a military house. It was an easy life if you had a good man. Don’t you see I even speak Swahili as well as you people?’
Wairimu did not really think so, but as she had learned it at an earlier age and had a more sensible mother-tongue to start with she did not press the point. Luo people generally did not tell the difference between one and many till they got to the end of a word, and could therefore be very careless about the vital first syllables in Swahili. Rahel, admittedly, was better than most. Whatever you learned in the army you were likely to learn well.
‘But