Monday in February 1967. This was probably the last day of Khira’s life, and, knowing her family and how they solved situations, it would be a violent end. Probably for Aunt Nyowuor too. An adoption was out of the question, a marriage completely alien.
But love had its own Justician Code.
Half orphaned Khira, Erik and their entourage set out for the journey shortly before sunrise. They drove through the majestic Rift Valley and the Escarpment, past people already displaying fruits and vegetables, colourful woven trays and beadwork, for sale on the roadside.
Vendors and buyers alike waved to them. A woman with a generation’s worth of children, one turning her into a dromedary, the others sorting out fruits and vegetables on makeshift tables, delegated duties to them. A boiled-eggs-seller was so eager at his profession he thought it in order to share half the road with the vehicles, making Joseph, the chauffeur, almost swerve into the oncoming traffic. A mile farther, in a dangerous s-curve, an ancient bus had broken down, the fact announced by green branches strewn on the ground several yards from the bus at both rear and front.
Vast carpets of luscious green tea plantations for tens of miles, shining under a cloudless blue sky, until the land rose into the undulating dense equatorial forests of Naru Moro hills. Thirty minutes later, the Uasin Gishu terrain alternated between thickets, shrub land and carefully cultivated eucalyptus, fir and pine forests.
Joseph, with Aunt Nyowuor in the passenger seat, targeted a lot of ruts that belched dust smoke especially in the wake of lorries or country buses that barged about and had no intention of giving anybody any right of way. These vehicles stopped in helter-skelter groups to scramble for passengers which included domestic animals and poultry; strictly excluded dogs. Humans, animals and birds were yelling simultaneously at the top of their voices. As Joseph manoeuvred his way through, a few people pounded on his window offering a couple of extra Shillings for Joseph to take them on as passengers. Through the darkened windows, they couldn’t see Khira and the two bwanas in the backseat, a fact that would have saved Joseph all that pounding.
He and his élite passengers consumed pints of juice and water. Erik swore often and excused his language to Khira. Nyowuor ranted on and off about "not being there more than ". She wholly distanced herself from the purpose of this drive, in between reading her Bible and mumbling prayers. Her duty was to be Khira’s duenna. That other parts of the Bwana’s body decided on marriage instead of adoption was nothing she could control. Khira was sixteen after all, men men.
Khira herself felt wonderful; for the immediate future looked forward to impressing the daylights out of everybody at her family’s farm in Kipkarren – arriving in a limousine with a uniformed chauffeur and two bwanas. Jean-Marie, the obligatory companion for a Luoland visit, sat in a pensive mood studying the terrain, except when Joseph’s soliciting passengers posed personal threats to the Frenchman. But if you worked for Erik Lindqvist, be prepared to go into orbit any time.
The Assessment
When the limousine rolled to a stop in Grandfather’s compound, Nyowuor was the first one out, determined not to be associated with the entire maneno. She hugged and kissed swarms of children who milled noisily around the car and the strangers, half awed, half thrilled at the rare occasion of touching a car.
Grandfather Solomon, looming large in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved scarlet shirt, approached the car, commanding the children with mock threats to step aside. He was well groomed as always, his snow-white hair emphasising his complexion.
“My father,” he shook hands with Nyowuor. “You’ve brought us guests in a fine nyamburko,” he gestured towards the limousine using the Dholuo word for a carriage. “Even if you didn’t give us prior notice as to their status. You’ve become a city dweller in manners.” Protocol demanded that visitors be announced in advance: to spare both host and guest any embarrassments at reception.
“Well, I’ve brought the guests all the same, my grandmother. But there ends my responsibility.” Terms of endearment in Luoland defied logic.
With that, Nyowuor walked away cooing to three children in her arms.
Erik stepped out and helped Khira after him. Rahab, Khira’s favourite cousin, fiercely hugged her.
Jean-Marie came out and stood next to Erik who was busy surveying the compound, his brain in overdrive.
Khira, her arm around Rahab, approached Grandfather and shook his hand - very delicately. She introduced Erik to him, “This is my...ah...Migosi Lindqvist, Grandfather.” She didn't introduce Grandfather to Erik. The man with a battalion’s worth of children and still marrying young girls, thought Erik.
Khira saw Mahma a distance away as that tongue-twister of a name tried to uproot Grandfather’s tongue into some decibel sound he decided not to bother with. She skipped off quickly, squealing and grateful for the convenient escape, dragging Rahab with her.
Joseph remained behind the wheel, re-checking his handbrake for the sake of the million crawlers around the wheels. Solomon shook hands first with Jean-Marie since he was obviously the older of the two half-humans, then with Erik. The big half-human’s handshake nearly made him wince and Solomon’s hand nearly lacerated Erik’s. Then his sons and adult grandsons shook hands with the scorched-skinned creatures, followed by the older children who were not too distracted by the limousine, but then skipped straight back to it immediately. The maidens and womenfolk did not shake any hands: they were either married or betrothed maidens of good breeding, never to have any physical contact with strange men, not to mention strange half-humans.
“Come with me, guests, and be welcome in my compound and house,” Solomon told the half-humans in Kiswahili. “What about your friend there,” he pointed at Joseph. “Come, guest, and be welcome in my home. Come.” Turning back to the half-humans he continued, “You’ll have to do with whatever we have since we were not prepared for your visit.”
Joseph joined the group walking to Solomon’s house.
“Forgive us, Solomon,” Erik said, making Solomon stop in his stride, “But we are not discourteous guests. The journey had to be made as we have done it.” Erik had rehearsed this with Khira dozens of times. He had spoken in Dholuo. And, although he spoke politely indeed, he also deliberately broke the first code of conduct - he addressed Solomon by his first name before it was established whether to addressed each other formally or informally.
Erik the Red, that wily Viking, knew Solomon would interpret this as masculine fearlessness.
“Then you’re no strangers, alien friends,” Solomon gave Erik one of Luoland’s convoluted language. As Khira had warned him, out here nobody quite called a spade a spade. “Accept what you find before you in my home, however humble or sumptuous."
Erik entered Solomon’s house feeling pleased with himself. When the four of them plus Solomon’s son Samuel were seated around an unpretentious table covered with a colourful cotton cloth, Erik again beat Solomon at propriety and introduced his companions to him and his son. True to his kind, Erik was forever aware of time, a thing as distantly existent in the conscious perception of the likes of Solomon - whose clocks were significant events - as their taste buds or skins. Solomon sat on his faded old armchair while the others sat on the three-ply chairs. He introduced himself and his son Samuel, who was as tall as his father, but darker in complexion. Erik noticed that Solomon was even lighter-complexioned than Khira. But she had his eyes - enormous, almond-shaped, lambent and mink-coloured.
Erik’s mind was rattling away. He enquired about the health of the children, the health of the mothers of the children, provoked lusty laughter when he said the health of the maidens only got ruined by strutting bucks. He didn't ask about the health of the men. Males were never sick, however sick they got.
Solomon was at this point talking to Erik in Dholuo - a privilege rarely accorded any jamwa - while Samuel interpreted.
Presently Doreena, the latest of Solomon’s young brides, brought in spiced tea made from half milk half water with freshly pounded ginger. A special Luoland treat. She demurely served the guests after a general verbal greeting. When Erik sipped his tea, it was so sweet he could hardly drink it. And here was Dory, Solomon’s brand-new beauty. He snatched the golden opportunity. Disregarding his host, he addressed the man’s wife directly and in Solomon’s presence, in Kiswahili - and thus eliminating Samuel's interpreter role as well.
“The tea is too sugary. Make me some fresh one without any sugar.”
This one was straight out of Freud’s centrefold. Doreena sweetly smiled and apologised to her husband, not to Erik, and hurried off to make the tea.
“You have a very pretty wife. I almost envy you.” Erik The Knife In Wound Twister.
It was enough for Solomon. Who did this jamwa think he was, arriving unannounced like the uncultured creature he was and now being liberal with his barbarism even to his own wife, ordering her around in his own house? Did he feed, house and sleep with her for him? Well and they were indeed half-humans, this one of the half-plant variety. Judging by the colour of his hair and eyes. They have ears but they never hear correctly. And with these animal eyes that kept shifting colour like the composure of a greedy courtesan or a faithless wife, the Old Wise Ones’ stories say they never see anything like human beings should. They say one thing and do another. And vice versa.
Solomon now did exactly what Erik had angled for: he came to the point. Erik had no time for niceties, The Lindqvist Group was waiting. Vexed, Solomon turned to his son and said, “Ask these mwache whether they only came here for a visit or whether they came with another word in their chests. Their course is turning more barbaric and the sooner I get rid of them the better.”
Samuel interpreted, editing out the last sentence.
The Confrontation
“I came to inform you that I love Khira and I’m going to marry her.” Erik had noticed the dark rage on Solomon’s face and was now determined to shove him overboard, make him lose face. Face loss out here was worth suicide.
A! The scorched-skinned had an excrement of a nerve! Inform him! In his own house, an uncultured scorched-skinned half-plant comes to inform him about his granddaughter and even has the audacity to assume he could be wedded to Khira!
“So. To inform me. I suppose in his blindness he hasn’t seen that Khira is a Luo maiden - my granddaughter.”
Samuel interpreted, this time without editing.
“I love her, Solomon, and that’s putting it mildly.”
The creature was arrogant and courageous. He kept on insulting his sensibilities. But Solomon had to be dignified as befitting his position in this house and compound.
“Khira is my granddaughter and already betrothed. She’s a Luo maiden.”
“I’m good enough for your granddaughter, Solomon, and I also happen to be the man she loves.” Go ahead and yell your head off in your own house at a guest.
“Khira is betrothed to a proper Luo buck, by the blood of my ancestors!”
“Not since Saturday morning, Solomon. Now she’s betrothed to me.”
Joseph sipped his tea calmly. Jean-Marie’s eyes continually darted to the spears, shields, arrows in quivers, bows and a scimitar in an ancient leather scabbard, which were arranged on Solomon’s walls. He wished he could say something, particularly warn Erik to control himself.
“I choose the man who is worthy of marrying my granddaughter,” Solomon talked to Erik through his son although Erik talked to him directly. “And by the blood of the ancients he shall never be a scorched-skinned excrement of...”
Samuel interrupted his father who was now near disgracing himself in the teeth of his vexation. “Bahba, please be civil.” He then told Erik the first half of his father’s sentence.
Erik thought: Got you going now. I’m a super-savage descended from a bunch of savages going back thousands of years and, believe me, my lot had not enough sunshine to make them continue living up trees for shade or dozing under fruit trees with piths and peels piled around them, their bellies full. “Solomon, you chose for her when she was an infant. Now she is a young woman and can do the choosing for herself. I happen to be her choice.”
Solomon sent for Khira. Since when did Khira, since when did a daughter, know how to choose a husband for herself? Just see what she had come up with!
Samuel poked his head in the doorway and bellowed, “Khhiiiraaaa!” then sat again.
Doreena brought in her sugarless tea and served her half-plant guest.
She noticed her husband’s dark rage. “Father of people, what has made your heart so dirty?”
“A word that cannot come from my mouth to your ears. Leave when you’re finished serving.”
Doreena smiled happily. Her loving husband had just told her in his manly fashion that he loved her too much to let her share his pain and worry. “Asante sana,” Erik thanked Doreena. He left his tea untouched, had another brainstorm. He got up after Doreena, said he wanted to stretch his legs. He was a guest, his wishes a command. He went outside, thinking of another version of Freud’s centrefold. He stood with his hands in his pockets surveying the compound again, eyes searching for Khira. Divisions of babies and children were crawling everywhere, even at the wheels still and on the bonnet - wobblers, crawlers, skippers, toddlers, you name it. Older children up in the fruit trees. Twenty-five to thirty houses of stone and brick and of various sizes and shapes, with corrugated iron roofs and tended euphorbia hedges between them singly or in groups, marking individual territories of husbands and wives - a permanent variation of piss-boundaries. A lone mud-and-brick hut - where Khira had been born, no doubt. Several young, older and old ladies fiddling with their hair, combing and braiding under shades of the trees or the eaves and awnings. Complexions of the entire range of blackness - from that false black-brown to nut-brown, from bronze-brown to yellow gold. Skins smooth as mirrors, not a pimple even on pubescent faces. Most crawlers and toddlers in nature uniform, male and female. Some huge randy red cock worrying a dilapidated cockerel while ignoring the plump hens. A pregnant nanny-goat stealing towards a vegetable garden but being shooed away by a top-less nubile beauty (breasts still just cherry-sized implants under the skin), with such grace that it appeared to be a choreographed Hellenic ballet. The entire compound seemed to be a harmonious ballet from a future past. A dozen or so very pregnant ladies going about their chores like ships rocking in anchor on calm waters. They made babies here like it was about to be prohibited. Survival of the busiest.
Khira came out of the hut with her mother who looked more like her twin sister. The twin sister saw Erik smiling at her and quickly retreated her steps back into her hut.
He met Khira halfway, took her hand and said, “You made a pretty fast disappearing act back there on our arrival, my soul, hmm?”
“I know, heart. Had to be done like that.”
“Uh-huh.” He held her to him. “Your Mamma is a beauty and looks younger than you.”
She made no comment on that. Instead she asked, “How’s it going, my life?” She was very anxious, her eyes darting around, head swivelling, because he had his arms around her in the open in broad daylight and in Grandfather’s holy kingdom of well-bred maidens. The women who saw them hurried indoors. The children romped and laughed and waved at them. Some of them were up on the branches of avocado and mango trees. Khira waved back. The men were nowhere in sight.
That did not signal a friendly atmosphere.
Erik grinned rakishly down at the nervous Khira, answered, “Difficult to say yet. A few thrusts and parries. Think I look good. Will you stop trying to wiggle out of my arms, princess, you’ll break yourself.” His six-foot-four frame swallowed her.
She whispered, “Heart, I told you it’s more than rude and indecent to hold me like this in public. It’s in fact taboo to...”
“Who’s stopping me, Eminence, you?”
She puffed out a resignation sigh shaking her head.
He led her back into the house and stood with her, an arm around her waist.
Grandfather got apoplectic. “Khira! Tell that half-plant creature to keep his hands off you - especially in front of me! This is not a sleeping chamber! Don’t they teach the creatures any manners where they come from?”
If only he was not in his own house, if only the matter didn’t involve what it involved! With Kwoyo K’Otieno a lifetime friend and neighbour!
Erik thought: I know this is hard-core pornography to you, my good man. But smart of you to have made a graceful exit by ignoring me and addressing your granddaughter. To her you can scream your head off purple without losing face.
“Grandfather,” Khira began, determined to dole out fire for fire as she’d promised herself. “He has a right to hold his future wife in front of anybody. It’s acceptable in his culture.”
The “future wife” appellation was Khira’s first tongue of the flame.
Grandfather looked at Khira and fear gripped his chest. This couldn’t be Khira. Suddenly he was like an antelope catching the whiff of grazers who were not antelopes. The tail whipped around in nervousness. Neck compassed the savannah. Nostrils dilated.
Well and didn’t he whisper this to his beloved First Wife only the other week, that Khira is earning too much money too suddenly, and therefore someone was bound to get jealous and have a witchdoctor cast an evil spell on her. The jewel has been bewitched! She was behaving like a heap of filth even before her own grandfather. Her tongue spoke yesterday’s excrement. And was this half-plant creature part of the evil spell? How much had gone on between it and Khira? Better tread carefully.
“Khira, he’s in my house now, and his barbarism is unwelcome here.” Controlled calmness. “What’s that I hear about future wife? What did the two of you do and where, on Saturday, to make you choose the creature for a husband? Can’t you see what the creature is?”
“I see nothing else but what he is, Grandfather. An honourable man who has acted with befitting propriety and come to ask for the hand of the maiden he loves.”
The fear tightened in Grandfather’s chest. They’ve made her vile, the jealous ones! Khira did not even look at him like a female, did not talk like a maiden of her breeding! “Khira, do you imagine I would allow you to give me scorched-skinned great-grandchildren? This thing is a half-plant. I don’t want half-plants born in this family. Look at him.” Khira eyes remained on Grandfather. He continued, “Look at the colour of his hair and those animal eyes, endlessly changing like the petals of the simbia flower on a moody day! Like the eyes of a night beast! You would end up with offspring…!” He could see the little monsters in his mind’s eyes. And the jealous excrements had to go and cast the evil spell on his precious pride of a granddaughter. He would find a potent witchdoctor to deal with the excrements.
His fear squeezing his heart, he became even softer of tone and asked, “My mother, have you perhaps disgraced yourself with the creature?”
Here Khira’s eyes wavered from his face to her feet. Well, we didn’t do anything disastrous. The family’s precious commodity is still intact. “We only declared our love for each other to each other, Grandfather.”
“So! You simply stood there like two mountain rocks who could at least talk and hear each other. Khira, did you let the creature fool around with you? Is that why you live in a palace and earn the salary of a Permanent Secretary? Have you been thrusting complementarily against his filthy groin all this while?”
She was a steno typist at the PR pool of the Lindqvist Group.
Khira shot back, annoyed, “I haven’t thrust against any man’s groin, Grandfather. I’m my father’s daughter!” She fought hard against the invading visions of their embraces at the weekend.
Now Solomon’s main worry was to find out who had bewitched his granddaughter. Khira wasn’t telling him the whole truth. “Good. Then you’ll marry your betrothed, Kwoyo’s son. Tell that uncultured creature to take his arms off you and forever keep them off you.”
“No, Grandfather. With all my worshipping love and respect for you, I shall never marry Barry. I’ll marry this uncultured creature. He alone shall be my lord.”
So. She’s prepared to elope with him. Was she perhaps already with child? This thought made Solomon tremble within. The vileness that would envelope his family! He sent for Nyowuor. The stupid woman had failed the whole family, the entire clan!
Courtesy of her age, this time Samuel didn’t bellow but went out to get the woman.
Jean-Marie cleared his throat discreetly, unable to take another sip of his sweet tea. He had followed the proceedings with Joseph as a whispering interpreter. He wished Erik would at least sit down. Joseph was on his third mug of tea which Samuel had served him from the thermos flask. Erik and Khira remained on their feet with Khira whispering to him about what had gone on between her and Grandfather. And of course she would never mention intact hymens to Erik. Omission, however, was no lie.
Samuel returned with Aunt Nyowuor who, as soon as she was through the door, was delivering mitigating factors and exonerating herself. “Well and I wrote two letters when the world began and the Gods had their sunrise meal, and said that the child was now a woman and needs the embrace of a husband. And I wrote, crying, that I will not accept being held responsible if she succumbs to such embraces with a crocodile in the grass. I wrote that the Bwana isn’t...”
“Sit down first, Dacha. I haven’t opened my mouth so where is your executioner or even prosecutor?” Solomon’s brows were furrowed, his heart filthy, his soul a heap of yesterday’s excrement, his liver made of bile. He remained silent, thinking. His great-aunt took a seat - as far away from him and as near the door as possible.
Silence screamed.
At last he said, “Dacha, look at my pride of a jewel and tell me what you see.”
“I see what you see,” she answered promptly. Her great nephew was called Solomon, but she didn’t read the Bible for nothing either.
Khira stifled a giggle. Top of the class, Auntie!
Solomon now spoke calmly, almost reverently. “So tell me of one remotest person in the whole land whose daughter would have a half-plant crooking its arm around them, let alone that it’s done in front of all and sundry.”
“Well and how can I tell you any such thing when none of the daughters had had a half-plant coming to ask for their hand in marriage?” She sat regally, nose up. She wasn’t there more than. Had absolutely nothing to do with the entire unpleasantness.
“Because that’s my headache. Some snake-hearted vermin has gone and cast an evil spell on Khira. Her wealth and looks have brought us a catastrophe." He had his knees apart, palms clamped on each knee, elbows jutting out as if he was about to raise his rear and engage in Sumo wrestling.
At Solomon's words, Nyowuor trumpeted a gasp, her eyes held on the ends of long stalks popping out of her face. Another one of those moments when the good lady found it necessary to put her Christian God aside with a little pat on His head and forget Him. Of course! The black mamba ancestor on that Sunday only a week ago back in Nairobi! Since that day, Khira’d suddenly turned into a half-plant creature's woman for pleasure.
Nyowuor turned to Solomon. "My nephew, a word is here which is gigantic more than, let me just wonder for you. A word is here which is sitting down."
Solomon leaned forward, supporting his chin between his right thumb and forefinger, the left hand cupped the elbow of the right arm, cushioning it on the knee.
Khira was seething inside, embarrassed no end. For Erik. She knew what was coming next. For the millionth time she wished she were Joyce, her girlfriend, with Joyce’s modern, civilised, European-high-society family. Why, had she been Joyce, she and Erik would’ve simply telephoned around, invited the family and friends over to glorious Gothenburg Mansion to celebrate their engagement, then she’d have an engagement ring on her finger just like in the Brönte novels, and the following day she, Erik, the family and friends would’ve gone for a sumptuous picnic at the Arboretum, strolled around it reading names of the trees and flowering shrubs and bushes - in Latin, you! But here she was with a pack of Mesozoicians quite definitely thinking of consulting another dinosaur who wears monkey skins, paints of chalk and ochre, death masks and cowry shells. She, the Princess of Gothenburg Mansion in person, who’d come in a limousine with a chauffeur and two bwanas believing she’d impress the devil out of everybody. Blushing with embarrassment, she had no choice but to translate what was being discussed to Erik in whispers, taking great care to be a magnificent editor.
Even before hearing his great-aunt's story, Solomon first gave orders for his son Mordecai to go fetch witchdoctor Wach who lived four miles away. Then he said, "So. A word is here which is crucified down. Wonder for me, Dacha."
Aunt Nyowuor wondered for Solomon. About the black mamba ancestor.
The previous but one Sunday evening, a black mamba had strayed into Khira’s sitting room, scaring the girl catatonic. Instinctively she’d encouraged Suave, Erik’s pet lion, who was in the room with her, to kill the snake. But in Luo folklore, a snake that enters an abode is regarded as an ancestor come in to warn the occupants that the abode wasn’t safe for them. Either it should be renovated or abandoned altogether. The snake, symbolic of an ancestral harbinger, should never be harmed in any way but coaxed out again. Once out, the state of the building’s construction must be thoroughly inspected and then adequately repaired. Killing the harbinger was tantamount to ushering in bad omens.
“Straight into the sitting room the ancestor came,” Nyowuor emphasised to further cement things, “where the jewel was lying down on the floor with the lion next to her before the fire. Note the significance of the fact that the girl was lying on the floor. Snakes don't fly. Khira had to be as near the ground as possible for the ancestor to communicate with her. What the jewel should have done, as we all know, was to remain dead still on the floor and the ancestor would have definitely whispered his warning by crawling around or over her.”
Nyowuor let her meaningful gaze sweep the room.
Grunts, shuffling of limbs and nods of understanding from her Luo audience.
She wondered further. “Well and fire is one of the elements of life. And, mark you, it had even rained, thundered and shined all in that single day. And that male wind during her burial of the snake-ancestor. Wasn't it a male wind that blew when the ancients beat back the raiding Bejewelled Ones? And where did I bury the ancestor after being mauled to death by that lion - on the branch of a tree? So. All the elements of life and all the ancient symbols had been involved on this single day.”
"A lion," said Solomon. "What was a lion doing in the city?"
"Ho, haven’t I said this one even sleeps inside the house on his own bed? Just let me wonder for you, I'm coming."
She waited for the dramatic effect to set, then continued.
“Today’s children have the kind of nerves I don't want to talk to you about. The nectar screams, wakes up a lion kept in a house like a singing bird, can you hear this now? Then the jewel, in ignorance surely, urges the lion to kill the poor ancestor. Enough? No. The jewel even saw to the medication of the wound the lion had incurred from the ancestor, who’d struck back like every self-respecting warrior should. Me, I arrived when the drums had long since been sounded. I did my best. Gave the ancestor a decent burial, summoning his mighty wind that told me the ancestor was male. I also firmly stamped down the grave with my naked feet. No hyenas should uncover the body and make a meal of the ancestor, then leave the rest for the vultures. This is the gigantic word, nephew Solomon. For since this day, the jewel began to conduct herself as if she were an alloy. I have spoken.”
"E!" from Solomon, nodding ceremoniously.
"E!" from Samuel.
“Ordovicians!” thought Khira as she told Erik what Auntie had narrated. But she continued being the perfect editor. Intact maidenheads were for the heathen.
Erik said that the mamba could have indeed sought warmth and it would possibly not have harmed her at all had she remained dead still.
"Remain still even with a mamba crawling over you?" Khira horse-whispered.
He nodded, "Even stop breathing in the process if necessary. The lady is right about the state of the nerves of the young today." He winked.
She rolled her eyes heavenwards.
Solomon was shaking. “Son, ask the thing if it has laid hands on my granddaughter."
Not a flinch from Erik. He only hoped that when the witchdoctor arrived he would not be asked to leap over fires in the nude while ululating. But if asked to utter war cries he’d give them a booming rendition of HA! SVENSKA!
"No, I haven't, Solomon. Not that I didn't try, mind."
So. Not that he didn't try. "My mother, why this uncultured creature? There are hundreds of Luo men who would kill for you, if you don't want your Barry."
"I can never love another but him, Grandfather. And there’re hundreds of Luos married to Europeans. Europeans are human beings... "
"Nobody from this family nor this clan is! We’re an upright folk jealous of our homogeneity! If other Luos choose to act in despicable manners, I don’t intend to disgrace myself by joining in!"
"Then I'll be the pioneer. From your teachings, Grandfather, there's such a mixture of blood in the family going back to the Nile..."
"Hold your tongue, child!" Solomon turned to his great-aunt. Khira was too full of this evil for any arguments. "Dacha, do you think that the jewel’s now really an alloy?"
"She’s conducting herself like one, isn't she?"
"Woman, you witnessed her conduct, I didn't!"
"Well and what I witnessed is what we're all witnessing now." The woman, for her own safety more than for the safety of her ward, chose not to mention adoption considerations, any bedroom scenes or kisses. Solomon's temper was cheek-by-jowl uninviting.
Khira too, inundated with her acquired city-girl affectations, whispered everything to Erik but chose not to say the state of her maidenhead was what was mostly in question. Ironically, though, he was the one forever endeavouring to disrobe her of her ravelled, misguided convictions in the meaning and relativity of civilisation and culture. Yet she still didn’t want Erik to think of her as such a real African, and not as sophisticated as Erik’s ex-mistress Frances, the woman Nyowuor first mistook for the bwana’s wife.
Solomon accused his great-aunt, "And why didn't you tell me of her conducting herself like an alloy? You failed in your pledged duties!"
Nyowuor pulled out her best remaining card.
"Ho! I'm only a woman so how could I manage to think of doing the right thing when the dark veils of this evil spell spread even over my own reasoning?" True, thought Solomon. His great-aunt would never have failed in her duties under normal circumstances. But what could weak womanhood do against a spell so evil it’d moved an ancestor to intervene? Yet he didn't want to suffer another fate similar to the one his daughter Rebecca had inflicted on him. Khira, too, possibly now had a monster half-plant growing in her. At least Rebecca had disgraced herself with a Luo man. He turned back to Khira.
"So. You have to pioneer harlotry in the family with a scorched-skinned half-plant creature. What drives you to such martyrdom?"
Khira decided that she and Erik had been subjected to enough insults. She turned the flame into a conflagration. "Grandfather, if my beloved is scorched-skinned then I'm pretty charred myself. It’s you who constantly taught us that colour is nature's secret - one of nature's secrets - and nobody can swear that green looks the same in everybody's mind. You said that one person could be seeing in their mind what another, were they to get into the first person's mind, could very well term red instead of green. But because they don’t live in each other's minds they’d come to agree on the labels from the time the ancients learnt to use words. I love the colour of my male. I don't see why his colouration makes him a half-plant. I only see him as a man and a human being, not a half-human creature."
"How can you do that? You're my own flesh and blood, Khira! I can't understand it and will never accept it!"
"But Grandfather, with all due respect, you also taught us children that one cannot accept or reject what one does not understand." She was her grandfather's granddaughter. Let him now have the so-called male side of her that he always admired but thought wasted on her gender.
She’d always come up with words that floored him. And now see how coarse her behaviour had become. Which female would point out a man's mistake to him so boldly in broad daylight and before alien company? Besides, he was her grandfather, by the blood of the ancients!
"Go back to your mother!" Solomon dismissed Khira.
She briefly explained to Erik what had gone on. Then she was gone like thin smoke.
"Vansinne!" Erik mumbled to himself in her wake.
Auntie followed Khira out and both joined Mahma outside her hut where Mahma had been wringing her hands and the hem of her dress all at once. She was a woman, understood her daughter's insanity over the forty-year-old European. The perfect husband-age for her child, born three months after her Bahba died.
"The heart is self-willed, my husband's beloved, and Europeans are good Christian people," was her verdict when Khira spoke of her love for Erik. Mahma, like Nyowuor, was another Bible fan club member.
Inside Solomon's house, Erik remained standing, his hands pocketed, watching Solomon who’d relapsed into deep thought in quietude again.
Aeons later he said to his son, "Tell this creature I don't need a column to support my roof."
Samuel asked Erik to resume his seat.
Erik sat casually, thinking of the Stock Exchange. He hated Solomon's shilly-shallying, wished the tyrant would do his thinking verbally. He could read Solomon's mind better when the man talked.
"He's a difficult man, Monsieur le Patron," Jean-Marie dared air his views for the first time, talking in French, relieved the giant Swede had sat down at last.
"I'm more difficult, Jean-Marie. I'll get my girl one way or another."
The exchange of words between the half-humans brought Solomon's attention back to them. "Son, tell the half-plant I do believe he has touched Khira." He was agonising over having his pride and dignity injured again, and worse this time. A daughter slept with in the grass by a half-plant creature! He wouldn't know where to bury his head.
"Of course I've touched her. I love her. I've kissed her; I've held her in my arms..."
"And then went no further, when he is supposedly a man and she is a beautiful jewel? Or is something wrong with his virility?"
Erik, sensitive on this subject like all men, exploded, "No, there's nothing wrong with my bloody virility, Solomon! Your granddaughter will be very content in my bed!" So, from where does the creature know with such certainty that he would satisfy Khira unless he’s tried it? Like fingerprints, no two women are the same.
A commotion suddenly broke outside from the children.
The Witchdoctor
Khira, Mahma and Auntie, sitting under the eaves of the hut's doorway, turned to see the arrival of witchdoctor Wach. He was astride the carrier of Mordecai's bicycle. He looked very impressive indeed in colobus monkey skins, paints from chalk, charcoal to ochre, horns, bones, shells, python skins and each sleeve sheathed in the remains of cobras whose heads formed epaulettes on his shoulders. He wore feathers, rattles anklets, beads, heads, claws and teeth of all sorts of beasts and...
Khira stopped evaluating the witchdoctor's full regalia, looked away.
Wach got off the bicycle, wielding his fly whisks of buffalo and giraffe tails, and was guided into the house of First Wife.
Khira was relieved by that fact. She didn't want Erik to see Wach.
Solomon was summoned, said to Samuel, "Son, tell this thing that our talks will continue when I come back, and I'll come back when I come back." He strode out.
Erik looked at his watch and cursed. "And how long do you think it will take before he comes back?" he asked Samuel after Samuel had translated his father’s last sentence, word for word.
"Can't say, Bwana. Maybe half an hour, maybe more or maybe less of course."
Doreena entered with a huge woven tray of assorted fruit, accompanied by her housemaid bearing glasses and a jug of freshly squeezed lemon juice mixed with water and sugar. When everything was arranged on the wooden table Doreena welcomed her guests to help themselves, left with her housemaid in tow.
Erik now responded to Samuel's answer. "Oh, beautiful. Maybe even a century, what?"
"Maybe, Bwana," said Samuel calmly, as if stating a universally obvious truth like sunrise. Skit! The Stock bloody Exchange, for God's sake.
Erik hadn't even seen a newspaper this morning. He picked up a banana from the fruit tray and left the house peeling it. Jean-Marie followed suit but remained seated. Joseph opted for a guava while Samuel dug his healthy teeth through the skin of a mango, left a yellow trough on it and chewed while the juice trickled between his fingers.
Outside, Khira leapt to Erik's side. He led her to the car that he now had trouble recognising as his usually gleaming limousine. She told him where Grandfather and Mighty Wach were in consultation. They sat in the car with all doors wide open owing to the heat, ate the banana between them. Erik poured himself some water, swore as the liquid splashed. "Can't even pour my own bloody drink - excuse my language, Gudinna. D’you think if I asked arrogantly enough Solomon would let me join them in their conference?"
She laughed, "Oh no, heart. Both of them wouldn't. And you don't wish to see the witchdoctor, he looks like multi-death!"
"That interesting? I'd like to meet him. He's not an everyday sight." He looked at his watch. Twenty to twelve. He’d arrived at eight-thirty that morning. Skit, he’d thought he'd be finished with the family dictator in an hour or so. "Princess, how far is the next telephone around here? I’d like to phone the office."
"About six miles away. But I'd advise you not to leave to go and telephone, then come back to talk to Grandfather about marrying his granddaughter. He'd ask you whether the telephone rejected your proposal or whether you discovered it was barren and would cheat you out of sons. I'm afraid I'm to be above everything else until the final decision, my life." Odin. "Okay, we'll forget the Stock... ah... the telephone. You're supreme, my soul.”
She laughed. "Now that you've met Grandfather, tell me what you think of his prejudices?"
"Hmm, yes. He's racially biased but in a positive sort of way, you know."
"Heart! Oh, I knew he'd find pearls even in a pig-sty!"
"That's it, my soul. No pig-sty here. Only tightly closed shellfish. Solomon’s very majestic about his prejudices. If the situation were to be reversed – if you were me and I you – they wouldn't let us into their home, let alone sit down and talk to us about their objections. In fact in America, they'd shoot you just for looking at me or gather around and lynch you revelling in it all like a bunch of mediaeval occultists. Now, that's barbarism, or d’you find that modern and civilised?"
She looked at her lap. "I suppose you're right."
"C'm'ere..."
In First Wife’s house after the formalities of salutations and welcome, Solomon said to Wach, "My headache is my pride of a granddaughter, Mighty Wach. I want to know who the excrement is, who dared usher ruin into my revered family by bewitching my jewel."
Wach nodded sagely and spread out the tools of his trade. He sat on the floor on skins of wild cats and began to rattle cowry shells in a buffalo horn while chanting incantations, waggled the fly whisks in turn over the paraphernalia, shook some beast's tail, knocked another's skull, spat furiously on a string of lions' teeth and claws, went into alternating trances and delirium, had a concerted dekko at this or that. He was completely immersed in his work, thorough and deliberate. He was good, like his father and grandfather before him, whatever the family secret that so distinguished them and earned them the title of Mighty. After twenty, twenty-five minutes he finally began "the casting of the shells" several times at intervals, and took his time deciphering each cast.
At last he had his revelations.
"E! Wuod Dibworo, a closed word is here. A word one ancestor wishes to reveal to you, Of High Birth. In a dream."
Solomon thought of the black mamba ancestor. "What do you see in the word?"
Wach pointed at a pair of shells that had fallen in such a way that one was hinged on top of the other. "I see bizarre mating. Alien and bizarre because, as you can see with your own eyes here, the top shell has scrambled on top of the bottom one but upside down."
Solomon nodded. Wach continued. "The evil rebels against owning up who sent it. The oddity indicates that the evil is not from our land. I smell it and hear it echoing from far away. It's misty. Is the girl in ill health, Highborn?" Like every psychoanalyst the world over, Mighty Wach had thoroughly done his psychological bit in questioning Mordecai about why he was being summoned to Solomon’s compound. Now, he used his wisdom and knowledge, put two and two together. And Wach was a first class herbalist too. Here, he needed no psychology.
"Not really. But her head is. She claims to be in love with a half-human."
"Ho! And is this not what I'm talking to you about? The evil does not belong to our people, our land! Haven't you ever heard of love witchery, Highborn, and don't you know what this can do? Or were you born this coming night?"
Everything became clear to Solomon. The excrement was none other than the wizard half-plant who even kept a lion in his house, which lion had killed the ancestor who had come to advise that Khira be removed from the wizard's vicinity. If the ancestor had not been murdered, Khira and Nyowuor would have evacuated the abode immediately.
Solomon sighed, "This evil is mayhap injected in her very blood, Mighty Wach. She lives and eats in the creature's compound. Can you handle this evil, exorcise it out of the girl and spare my family the disgrace?"
"Of High Birth, how can I handle an evil whose feet and character have never been in our land? How do you think I'll know its strengths and weaknesses? But I have a sound solution, Of High Birth. It’s simple: we sacrifice the girl."
"Sacrifice my jewel? By the bones of the ancients and the Eunuch God!"
Noticing Solomon's rage, Wach tried to mollify him. "Highborn, look. It will never stop her being one of our own blood. Another important thing is that the evil will triumph in its victory and therefore become more agreeable - if it owns her it will protect her. The third thing is, in taking her under its wings, the evil will utilise her for whatever errands or services and therefore we should sever her from among us, lest the evil invades more of us - and we don't know its nature. It could possess us all with our young ones, Highborn. Let's grant it the single but devastating victory by sacrificing the girl."
Solomon was mute for quite a while, ruminating. After that he rubbed his face and head with his hands, heavy sighed, "You've talked, Mighty Wach. I accept your decision. It’s the wisest under the circumstances. Now come and see the maggot-skin. "
Wach performed his cleansing and blessing ceremonies on Solomon, then quickly gathered and packed his tools of trade, and together the two men left the two-roomed house.
Erik saw them first. He’d been keeping watch. "Here they are at last," he told Khira.
"Ancestors," she covered her face with her hands. "Now you see what I meant." "För Guds skull," he murmured. "Not bad. It's just his version of the couch and the funny-peculiar drawings, all for the good of the clients, my soul."
He got out of the car.
Khira remained seated, doubled over with embarrassment.
Erik strutted to meet the two men and shook hands very firmly with the dumbfounded Mighty Wach. The witchdoctor winced and looked terrified to death. He had never seen one of the creatures up close, let alone one with eyes behaving like those of a night beast. Erik said in Kiswahili, chortling, "You look very impressive there, mate. I like your uniform."
Wach looked at Erik as if he was a living thing spun off the evolutionary balance. When Erik released his hand, Wach hurried off wordlessly, studying his palm and the back of his hand. He was relieved to find the back of his hand still in its original colour. He accepted the randy cock Erik had observed earlier on plus ten Shillings, from Mordecai, as fees for his services. Then he straddled the bicycle's carrier clutching the cock under his armpit as Mordecai pedalled him away.
The Solution
Solomon headed back to his house without a word to Erik, who followed in his wake. When they were seated again he told Samuel, "My son, we have to sacrifice Khira. We have to get rid of her. The evil possessing her is from this creature. He may marry her. We have to get rid of the evil so that it will not be grazing among us."
Samuel cleared his voice and then translated his father's words to Erik. HA! SVENSKA! He did not waste another second, was even more arrogant, speaking directly to Solomon in Kiswahili to save time wasted in interpretations.
"Excellent, Solomon. Now, I understand that I have to pay a bride price and what you term Consent Money – for Khira's consenting to my marriage proposal. How much for the latter?"
"It's not a market day and this is not the market place; it's my house. You're not buying a cow here so you’ll behave yourself, Uncultured One." Solomon too spoke in Kiswahili. His mother tongue was too sacred for wizard half-plants with evils unknown even to Mighty Wach.
"You sell your brides, Solomon. Where I come from, trade is trade whatever the commodity. Time for politeness is over as far as I'm concerned. How much?"
Solomon silently cursed this wizard half-plant and the rains, fires and winds that ever drove the creature to anywhere near him and his people. Speaking slowly and with dignity as he and his kind did when vexed by aliens, he said, "Uncultured One, we don't sell our brides. We soothe families losing their own flesh and blood to another family. We compress broken hearts and revere tears of mothers who must relinquish a child of their womb. We ensure that parents the Gods and the ancestors gave no more than one child are not left to hunger and sleep under leaking roofs and loneliness. We provide for kith and kin, Uncultured One. We don't trade. But you creatures sell water and fire. Did you make water and fire? Do these belong to you?"
Temporarily, Erik's mercantile and sword-clashing addiction automatically engaged. He answered, "No, Solomon, we didn't and they don’t. But it's all a theory called supply and demand. If somebody needs water, just step in between him and the water, cut it off from him until he's desperate enough for it. Then he'll come and gladly pay your price for it. The same with fire and always at a price you desire. Same with everything on earth, really."
Solomon eyed Erik curiously, convinced that the creatures were perhaps even lower than half-humans. "You’d watch another slowly dying of thirst or freezing in the cold just in the name of trade?"
"Precisely, old fellow, and earn a pretty uncultured profit from it. Solomon, if people lacked for nothing we'd sell them not only that but also charge them extra for packaging it beautifully for them. We even sell time - enough of which I've wasted here this morning - which is invisible without a clock or watch, so we sell clocks and watches. And we have these great fellows - a more decadent breed than your witchdoctor of a few minutes ago - who simply lend you a good ear while you talk your heart out. Then charge you the earth for the number of hours you were there talking."
"Ho! So to talk you have to have money in your pocket first and not say more words than you can buy?"
"More or less. And that's not the worst. Say, for an insignificant example, you were freezing, we would sell you the firewood first because it's the more expensive, then charge you extra for the box of matches. And if you didn't have that tiny change for the matches, we'd jolly well leave you freezing next to your pile of firewood. Now then, how much..." "Uuuuuwi!" Solomon looked at Samuel.
"Oh, if that bowls you over then I'll cure it with this: we sell DEATH, my good man, and call it LIFE INSURANCE. Smart, huh? Now, tell me how much I have to pay for the Consent Money. My time is costing me money right now and that rubs me the wrong way up."
There was no point in being shocked over the peculiarities of half-humans, Solomon decided, thinking aloud in Dholuo, addressing his son. He brought his mind back to the business at hand. He opted for the starting point of a thousand Shillings - way above the going rate - deciding not to bargain below five hundred - also still way above rates for ordinary wanainchi. After all, if these creatures could trap and contain it, he pointed out to Samuel, they would sell you the air to breathe.
“They already do, Father. To the sick and dying.” Then Samuel got to Erik with the price.
“They already…!” Solomon closed his mouth as if suddenly exposed to putrescence.
"Excellent. I'll make that a thousand Kenyan pounds, Solomon. See how much your granddaughter means to me?" A thousand pounds was about eight hundred and fifty pounds Sterling, or twenty thousand Shillings. He often spent that on a vintage collection bottle of wine. He was scribbling away as he spoke to the now dumbstruck duo. "Right, the bride price. You all have houses except for Khira's mother, and she’d like her mother to live in a decent house. I’ll therefore build her a house costing up to five thousand pounds and furnish it from roof to floor with all amenities that can function out here. Satisfied?" he asked re-capping his pen, closing his notebook and locking both in his attaché case.
Solomon still could not speak, but Samuel found his tongue and went, "Wuololololo..."
The man is either God or raving mad. Samuel walked out of the house, unable to sit still any longer, and went straight to his sister under the eaves with Khira and Nyowuor. He told them Khira would marry her European after all, then quoted the man's voluntarily offered bride price and Consent Money. Khira hugged Mahma with ear-splitting squeals. Both Mahma and herself were stepping into European-high-society hand in hand.
In Solomon's house, he finally said to Erik, "You're a mighty wizard, Uncultured One. What love potion and evil spirits did you feed and weave around my granddaughter?"
"Myself, Solomon. I can be pretty evil." Erik grinned slantedly.
So. He’s been. With a bewitched spear in the lead. Okay. "And you found what you should find, as a man, in Khira?" Hopefully the girl hadn't spent her city life on her back with an assortment of men before the wizard creature added to their number.
Erik nodded. "The best, Solomon. I found my whole life's dream."
Bless the bony ancients. "Uncultured One, I appreciate your acting with propriety in the teeth of matters. Sometimes a man cannot help being impatient for his life's dream." Because, unlike Rebecca's husband, the half-plant had not waited until an obviously pregnant Khira was forced on him as a bride.
Outside a new drama began.
Nyowuor recovered first from Samuel's news and fluttered, "Well and quick, Olisabeth, the Big Bwana will be out of the house any moment now."
"Of course," said Mahma hurriedly rising and dragging Khira into the hut.
"What's the matter now, Mahma?"
"You're getting married, beloved. Your husband must not see you until your wedding day, have you forgotten?"
Disease! She had, what with three years at St Mary's and now being a city girl. What a pack. One minute it's hymns and halleluiahs, the next they're the almighty Luos. "But, Mahma, that's all too old fashioned today. My husband is a European, by the bony ancients."
Technically, Erik was already a husband.
"Shush, my husband's beloved. Didn't you tell me that it's our side of you that he's a fool for? Now, tell me when you last..."
Khira swore again as the womenfolk streamed into the hut, ululating. Presently she heard Erik call her name outside. She rose up to go to him and the women fell upon her. She screamed, scratched, kicked and bit until she broke loose and ran outside where Samuel was explaining to Erik that he won't see Khira until the wedding day, and the wedding day will be announced as soon as the womenfolk determined it.
"The bloody hell I won't!" he exploded before he saw her running to him. He dropped his attaché case and scooped her up, spinning with her. "We won, my soul!"
"I know, heart. But quick, let's get into the car and drive off. Quick!"
Too late. The men of the compound suddenly materialised out of nowhere and surrounded Erik and Khira. They grabbed and held him while peeling Khira off him.
She was hauled back into the hut. "You’ll behave yourself, young one," warned Cyclist Mordecai. "Or I’ll personally whip the skin off your flesh!"
"I'm sick and tired of this family's antiquated ways brought over from since the ancestors lived next door to Bethlehem. I'm glad I'm not marrying a Luo. From now on, my children and I will be Swedes!"
Mordecai sneered, "What if the creatures choose to call themselves Afro-Swedes?" He read Ebony now and then, had come across the term Afro as a prefix for African blood. He marched out.
Anything but Luo, Khira stared daggers in Mordecai’s wake.
The women resumed their cacophony.
Mahma said to Khira, "So, beloved, when did you last..."
"Since this morning!" Khira screamed pounding her thighs with her fists. "I don't even have a change of clothing, by the bony ancestors."
Mahma announced to the raving women that Khira was on. A fresh cacophony of praises and ululation, which turned into counting off days. Khira watched them count. On fingers and toes assisted by their lips. They’d count their toes first using the forefinger, then go over to the fingers of one hand, folding each counted finger, hold the counted fist in the air and use their lips to fold the fingers of the second hand. Counted back to the last full, half and quarter moons. Then forwards. Then years in odd and even numbers in Khira’s entire life. Khira stuffed her fingers in her ears and shut her eyes tightly in order not to hear nor see the dinosaurs.
Mahma hugged her at last. "Alright, my husband's beloved, you may be married on Friday, two weeks from today. You'll be ready then."
The mathematicians had reiterated and reiterated. Until they arrived at an answer over the correct date. They even dabbled in astrology and obstetrics. Carried on about the Friday being a sure-fire night for impregnation and the child conceived that night would be a healthy son.
Nyowuor lumbered outside to announce the date to Solomon, who announced it to Samuel. Solomon then marched off to go and break the rotten news to Kwoyo K’Otieno, Barry's father.
Samuel announced the wedding date to Erik.
"Alright," Erik said between gritted teeth. No end to rude awakenings with Khira. As he watched the men lounging around him nonchalantly but certainly ready to grab him if they deemed it necessary, he wondered why Khira had not enlightened him on this angle. "Alright, Friday. I'll be here with a marriage officer and my guests. But I warn you, I won' t take any more mumbo-jumbo. Samuel, ask Khira if there's anything she needs before I leave. Now hurry up, I haven't got all day - I'm a busy man!"
Samuel soon came back with a note from Khira. Erik snatched it unceremoniously and swaggered off to his car, cursing a purple streak, Jean-Marie at his heels carrying the attaché case.
Khira's sobbing increased as she heard the car start and drive away.
"Shush, nectar!" said Mahma. The other women echoed her. "My husband's jewel, you must now listen to us and learn how to make your beloved a perfect wife."
Khira screamed in between sobs about wanting to learn no more from antiquated ways. Mahma hugged, "But, my jewel, you seem to forget that that's your sword over him - the proper Luo maiden, not another Europeanised African. With this sword you’ll either kill him or make him a man of surpassing achievement in men’s world, as well as in your home as your muscled infant and the father of your children. So."
Khira at last smiled through her tears hugging Mahma back. "Alright, my father's beloved," she said. Mahma wiped Khira’s tears away with the hem of Mahma's dress, the rest of the women settled around in readiness.
"Give me my sword."
Why not? Khira told herself. She would be the one wielding it as, when and how she deemed appropriate.
