Putting It Together; Turning Sow's Ear Drafts into Silk Purse Stories Part 10

"You are sure?"

"I am sure," I said, laying a comforting hand on his bony shoulder. "In fact, I wish you had been there to support me when the end came."

"What good would the support of an old man have been?"

"You are not justany old man," I answered. "The word of a descendant of Johnstone Kamau would have carried much weight among the Council of Elders."

"That was another reason I was afraid to come," he replied, the words flowing a little more easily this time. "How could I live up to my name-for everyone knows that Johnstone Kamau became Jomo Kenyatta, the great Burning Spear of the Kikuyu. How could I possibly compare to such a man as that?"

"You compare more favorably than you think," I said rea.s.suringly. "I could have used the pa.s.sion of your belief."

"Surely you had support from the people," he said.

I shook my head. "Even my own apprentice, who I was preparing to succeed me, abandoned me; in fact, I believe he is at the university just down the road even as we speak. In the end, the people rejected the discipline of our traditions and the teachings of Ngai for the miracles and comforts of the Europeans. I suppose I should not be surprised, considering how many times it has happened here in Africa." I looked thoughtfully at the elephant. "I am as much an anachronism as Ahmed. Time has forgotten us both."

"But Ngai has not."

"Ngai, too, my friend," I said. "Our day has pa.s.sed. There is no place left for us, not in Kenya, not on Kirinyaga, not anywhere."

Perhaps it was something in the tone of my voice, or perhaps in some mystic way Ahmed understood what I was saying. Whatever the reason, the elephant stepped forward to the edge of the force field and stared directly at me.

"It is lucky we have the field for protection," remarked Kamau.

"He would not hurt me," I said confidently.

"He has hurt men whom he had less reason to attack."

"But not me," I said. "Lower the field to a height of five feet."

"But..."

"Do as I say," I ordered him.

"Yes,mundumugu ," he replied unhappily, going to a small control box and punching in a code.

Suddenly the mild visual distortion vanished at eye level. I reached out a rea.s.suring hand, and a moment later Ahmed ran the tip of his trunk gently across my face and body, then sighed deeply and stood there, swaying gently as he transferred his weight from one foot to the other.

"I would not have believed it if I had not seen it!" said Kamau almost reverently.

"Are we not all Ngai's creations?" I said.

"Even Ahmed?" asked Kamau.

"Who doyou think created him?"

He shrugged again, and did not answer.

I remained for a few more minutes, watching the magnificent creature, while Kamau returned the force field to its former position. Then, as the night air became uncomfortably cold, as so often happened at this alt.i.tude, I turned to Kamau.

"I must leave now," I said. "I thank you for inviting me here. I would not have believed this miracle had I not seen it with my own eyes."

"The scientists think it istheir miracle," he said.

"You and I know better," I replied.

He frowned. "But why do you think Ngai has allowed Ahmed to live again, at this time and in this place?"

I paused for a long moment, trying to formulate an answer, and found that I couldn't.

"There was a time when I knew with absolute certainty why Ngai did what He did," I said at last. "Now I am not so sure."

"What kind of talk is that from amundumugu ?" demanded Kamau.

"It was not long ago that I would wake up to the song of birds," I said as we left Ahmed's enclosure and walked to the side gate through which I had entered. "And I would look across the river that wound by my village on Kirinyaga and see impala and zebra grazing on the savannah. Now I wake up to the sound and smell of modern Nairobi and then I look out and see a featureless grey wall." I paused. "I think this must be my punishment for failing to bring Ngai's word to my people."

"Will I see you again?" he asked as we reached the gate and he deactivated a small section long enough for me to pa.s.s through.

"If it will not be an imposition," I said.

"The great Koriba an imposition?" he said with a smile.

"My son finds me so," I replied. "He gives me a room in his house, but I can tell he would prefer I lived elsewhere. And his wife is ashamed of my bare feet and mykikoi ; she is constantly buying me European shoes and clothing to wear."

"Myson works inside the laboratory," said Kamau, pointing to his son's third-floor office with some pride. "He has seventeen men working for him. Seventeen!"

I must not have looked impressed, for he continued, less enthusiastically, "It is he who got me this job, so that Iwouldn't have to live with him."

"The job of paid companion," I said.

A bittersweet expression crossed his face. "I love my son, Koriba, and I know that he loves me-but I think that he is also a little bit ashamed of me."

"There is a thin line between shame and embarra.s.sment," I said. "My son glides from the one to the other like the pendulum of a clock."

Kamau seemed grateful to hear that his situation was not unique. "You are welcome to live with me, mundumugu ," he said, and I could tell that it was an earnest offer, not just a polite lie that he hoped I would reject. "We would have much to talk about."

"That is very considerate of you," I said. "But it will be enough if I may visit you from time to time, on those days when I find Kenyans unbearable and must speak to another Kikuyu."

"As often as you wish," he said."Kwaheri, mzee."

"Kwaheri,"I responded.Farewell.

I took the slidewalk down the noisy, crowded streets and boulevards that had once been the sprawling Athi Plains, an area that had swarmed with a different kind of life, and got off when I came to the airbus platform. An airbus glided up a few minutes later, almost empty at this late hour, and began going north, floating perhaps ten inches above the ground.

The trees that lined the migration route had been replaced by a dense angular forest of steel and gla.s.s and tightly-bonded alloys. As I peered through a window into the night, it seemed for a few moments that I was also peering into the past. Here, where the t.i.tanium-and-gla.s.s courthouse stood, was the very spot where the Burning Spear had first been arrested for having the temerity to suggest that his country did not belong to the British. Over there, by the new eight-story post office building, was where the last lion had died. Over there, by the water recycling plant, my people had vanquished the Wakamba in glorious and b.l.o.o.d.y battle some 300 years ago.

Off in the distance was the original Kirinyaga, Mount Kenya, from which Ngai was said to rule the universe. When I had returned to Earth, I had thought to live there, but a sprawling city of two million people snaked up the slopes of the holy mountain, covering the sacred soil with asphalt and cement, replacing the tall trees with taller buildings. I decided that if I was to live amid the corruption and contamination of a debased society, it would out of respectnot be on Ngai's mountain.

"We have arrived,mzee ," said the driver, and the bus hovered a few inches above the ground while I made my way to the door. "Aren't you chilly, dressed in just a blanket like that?"

I did not deign to answer him, but stepped out to the sidewalk, which did not move here in the suburbs as did the slidewalks of the city. I preferred it, for man was meant to walk, not be transported effortlessly by miles-long beltways.

And as I walked, I tried to look across the centuries once more, to see the mud-and-gra.s.s huts, the bomas andshambas of my people, but the vision was blotted out by the row upon row of mock-Tudor and mock-Victorian and mock-Colonial and mock-contemporary houses, intermixed with needle-like apartment buildings that reached up to stab the clouds. For a moment I was disoriented, but then I remembered which house belonged to my son, and I walked slowly to it.

I had no desire to speak to him or my daughter-in-law, for they would question me endlessly about where I had been, and my son would once again warn me about the thieves and muggers who prey on old men after sunset in Nairobi, and my daughter-in-law would try to subtly suggest that I would be warmer in a coat and pants. So I walked past my son's house, and walked around the block five times, until all the lights in the house had gone out. Then I walked once more around the block, to make sure they had time to fall asleep, and finally I entered through the back door, and softly made my way to my room.

Usually I dreamed of Kirinyaga, but this night the image of Ahmed haunted my dreams. Ahmed, eternally confined by a force field; Ahmed, trying to imagine what lay beyond his tiny enclosure; Ahmed, who would live and die without ever seeing another of his own kind.

And gradually, my dream shifted to myself: to Koriba, attached by invisible chains to a Nairobi he could no longer recognize; Koriba, trying futilely to mold Kirinyaga into what it might have been; Koriba, who once led a brave exodus of the Kikuyu until one day he looked around and found that he was the only Kikuyu remaining.

I awoke with the sun, as always; and I remained in my bed, pretending to sleep, as always, until my son and his wife had left the house and gone off to their jobs. Then I arose, went to the kitchen, ordered breakfast from the computer, and sat at the table, staring out at the blank grey wall that separated my son's house from his neighbor's.

After I finished eating I walked through the house. My son's wife had left the holo set on for me, as she did every morning; I deactivated it, asI did every morning. Of all the European gifts we had not asked for, I think I hated that one the most.

I walked out the door and wandered over to the park. Once lions had stalked this land. Leopards had clung to overhanging limbs, waiting for the opportunity to pounce upon their prey. Wildebeest and zebra and gazelles had rubbed shoulders, grazing on the tall gra.s.ses. Giraffes had nibbled the tops of acacia trees, while warthogs rooted in the earth for tubers. Rhinos had nibbled on thornbushes, and charged furiously at any sound or sight they could not immediately identify.

Then the Kikuyu had come and cleared the land, bringing with them their cattle and their oxen and their goats. They had dwelt in huts of mud and gra.s.s, and lived the life that we had tried to emulate on Kirinyaga.

But all that was in the past. Today the park contained nothing but a few squirrels racing across the imported Kentucky Blue Gra.s.s and a pair of hornbills that had nested in the one of the transplanted European trees. Old Kikuyu men, dressed in shoes and pants and jackets, sat on the benches that ran along the perimeter. One man was tossing crumbs to an exceptionally bold starling, but most of them simply sat and stared aimlessly.

I found an empty bench, but decided not to sit on it. I didn't want to be like these men, who saw nothing but the squirrels and the birds, when I could see the lions and the impala, the war-painted Kikuyu and the red-clad Maasai, who had once stalked across this same land.

I continued walking, suddenly restless, and despite the heat of the day and the frailty of my ancient body, I walked until twilight. I decided I could not endure dinner with my son and his wife, their talk of work, their veiled suggestions about a nearby Kikuyu retirement home, their inability to comprehend either why I went to Kirinyaga or why I returned, so instead of going home I began walking aimlessly through the crowded city.

Finally I looked up at the sky, at the myriad of stars that were just beginning to appear, and wondered which one was Kirinyaga.

Ngai,I said silently,I still do not understand. I was a good mundumugu. I obeyed Your law. I honored Your rituals. There must have come a day, a moment, a second, when together we could have saved Kirinyaga if You had just manifested Yourself. Why did You abandon it when it needed You so desperately?

I spoke to Ngai for minutes that turned into hours, but He did not answer, and finally I turned my attention to other matters. When it was ten o'clock, I decided it was time to start making my way to the laboratory complex, for it would take me more than an hour to get there, and Kamau began working at eleven.

As before, he deactivated the electric barrier to let me in, then escorted me to the small gra.s.sy area where Ahmed was kept.

"I did not expect to see you back so soon,mzee ," he said.

"I have no place else to go," I answered, and he nodded, as if this made perfect sense to him.

Ahmed seemed nervous until the breeze brought my scent to him. Then he turned to face the north, extending his trunk every few moments.

"It is as if he seeks some sign from Mount Marsabit," I remarked, for the great creature's former home was hundreds of miles north of Nairobi, a solitary green mountain rising out of the blazing desert.

"He would not be pleased with what he found," said Kamau.

"Why do you say that?" I asked, for no animal in our history was ever more identified with a location than the mighty Ahmed with Marsabit.

"Do you not read the papers, or watch the news on the holo?"

I shook my head. "What happens to black Europeans is of no concern to me."

"The government has evacuated the town of Marsabit, which sits next to the mountain. They have closed the Singing Wells, and have ordered everyone to leave the area."

"Leave Marsabit? Why?"

"They have been burying nuclear waste at the base of the mountain for many years," he said. "It was just revealed that some of the cannisters broke open almost six years ago. The government hid the fact from the people, and then failed to properly clean up the leak."

"How could such a thing happen?" I asked, though of course I knew the answer. After all, how does anything happen in Kenya?

"Politics. Payoffs. Corruption."

"A third of Kenya is desert," I said. "Why did they not bury it there, where no one lives or even thinks to travel, so when this kind of disaster occurs, as it always does, no one is harmed?"

He shrugged. "Politics. Payoffs. Corruption," he repeated. "It is our way of life."

"Ah, well, it is nothing to me anyway," I said. "What happens to a mountain 500 kilometers away does not interest me, any more than I am interested in what happens to a world named after a different mountain."

"It interestsme ," said Kamau. "Innocent people have been exposed to radiation."

"If they live near Marsabit, they are Pokot and Rendille," I pointed out. "What does that matter to the Kikuyu?"

"They arepeople , and my heart goes out to them," said Kamau.

"You are a good man," I said. "I knew that from the moment we first met." I pulled some peanuts from the pouch that hung around my neck, the same pouch in which I used to keep charms and magical tokens. "I bought these for Ahmed this afternoon," I said. "May I...?"

"Certainly," answered Kamau. "He has few enough pleasures. Even a peanut will be appreciated. Just toss them at his feet."

"No," I said, walking forward. "Lower the barrier."

He lowered the force field until Ahmed was able to reach his trunk out over the top. When I got close enough, the huge beast gently took the peanuts from my hand.

"I am amazed!" said Kamau when I had rejoined him.

"Oh?"

"Even I cannot approach Ahmed with impunity, yet you actually fed him by hand, as if he were a family pet."

"We are each the last of our kind, living on borrowed time," I said. "He senses a kinship."

I remained a few more minutes, then went home to another night of troubled sleep. I felt Ngai was trying to tell me something, trying to impart some message through my dreams, but though I had spent years interpreting the omens in other people's dreams, I was ignorant of my own.

My days faded one into another, the dullness and drudgery of them broken only by occasional nocturnal visits to the laboratory complex. Then one night, as I met Kamau at the gate, I could see that his entire demeanor had changed.

"Something is wrong," I said promptly. "Are you ill?"

"No,mzee , it is nothing like that."

"Then what is the matter?" I persisted.

"It is Ahmed," said Kamau, unable to stop tears from rolling down his withered cheeks. "They have decided to put him to death the day after tomorrow."

"Why?" I asked, surprised. "Has he attacked another keeper?"