Song of a Dry River Read online

  “And if I don't, what will you do to me?” she demanded, glaring at him. “Will you bind my hands and feet and force me to remain here in my hut?”

  “I am the paramount chief,” said Koinnage in obvious frustration. “I order you to stay here!”

  “Hah!” she said, and now the peoples’ chuckles became outright laughter. “You may be a chief, but you are still my son, and mothers do not take orders from their sons.”

  “But everyone must obey the mundumugu,” he said, “and Koriba has ordered you to remain here.”

  “I will not obey him,” she said. “I came to Kirinyaga to be happy, and I am unhappy in your shamba. I am going to live on the hill, and neither you nor Koriba will stop me.”

  Suddenly the laughter stopped, and was replaced by an awed silence, for no one may flaunt the mundumugu's authority in such a manner. Under other circumstances I might have forgiven her, for she was very upset, but she had challenged me in front of the entire village, and it was the end of a long, irritating day.

  My anger must have been reflected on my face, for Koinnage suddenly stepped between his mother and myself.

  “Please, Koriba,” he said, his voice unsteady. “She is an old woman, and she does not know what she is saying.”

  “I know what I am saying,” said Mumbi. She glared at me defiantly. “If I cannot live as I like, then I prefer not to live at all. What will you do to me, mundumugu?”

  “I?” I said innocently, aware of the many eyes that were focused upon me. “I will do nothing to you. As you yourself have pointed out, I am merely an old man.” I paused and stared at her, as Koinnage and his wives shrank back in fear. “You speak fondly of the dry river we lived beside when we were children—but you have forgotten what it was like to live beside it. I will help you to remember.” I raised my voice, so that all could hear. “Because you have chosen to ignore our tradition, and because the others have laughed, tonight I shall sacrifice a goat and ask Ngai to visit Kirinyaga with a drought such as it has never seen before, until the world is as dry and withered as you are yourself, Mumbi. I shall ask Him not to allow a single drop of rain to fall until you return to your shamba and agree to remain there.”

  “No!” said Koinnage.

  “The cattle's tongues will swell in their heads until they cannot breathe, the crops will turn to dust, and the river will run dry.” I looked angrily at the faces of my people, as if daring them to laugh again, but none of them had the courage to meet my gaze.

  None but Mumbi, that is. She stared thoughtfully at me, and for a moment I thought she was going to retract her statement and agree to remain with Koinnage. Then she shrugged. “I have lived by a dry river before. I can do so again.” She began walking away. “I am going to my hill now.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  “Must you do this thing, Koriba?” asked Koinnage at last.

  “You heard what your mother said to me, and yet you ask me that?” I demanded.

  “But she is just an old woman.”

  “Do you think that only warriors can bring destruction upon us?” I responded.

  “How can living on a hill destroy us?” asked Kibo.

  “We are a society of laws and rules and traditions, and our survival as a people depends upon all of them being equally obeyed.”

  “Then you will really ask Ngai to bring a drought to Kirinyaga?” she said.

  “I am tired of being doubted and contradicted by my people, who have all forgotten who we are and why we have come here,” I replied irritably. “I have said I would ask Ngai to visit Kirinyaga with a drought, and I will.” I spat on my hands to show my sincerity.

  “How long will the drought last?”

  “Until Mumbi leaves my hill and returns to her own hut on her own shamba.”

  “She is a very stubborn old woman,” said Koinnage miserably. “She could stay there forever.”

  “That is her choice,” I answered.

  “Perhaps Ngai will not listen to your supplication,” said Kibo hopefully.

  “He will listen,” I replied harshly. “Am I not the mundumugu?”

  * * * *

  When I awoke the next morning, Ndemi had already built my fire and fed my chickens. I emerged from my hut into the cold morning air, my blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

  “Jambo, Koriba,” said Nedmi.

  “Jambo, Ndemi,” I answered.

  “Why has Mumbi built a hut on your hill, Koriba?” he asked.

  “Because she is a stubborn old woman,” I replied.

  “You do not wish her to live here?”

  “No.”

  Suddenly he grinned.

  “What do you find so amusing, Ndemi?” I asked.

  “She is a stubborn old woman and you are a stubborn old man,” said Ndemi. “This will be very interesting.”

  I stared at him, but made no answer. Finally I walked into my hut and activated my computer.

  “Computer,” I said, “calculate an orbital change that will bring a drought to Kirinyaga.”

  “Working ... done,” replied the computer.

  “Now transmit those changes to Maintenance and request that they enact them immediately.”

  “Working ... done.” There was a moment's silence. “There is a voice-and-image message incoming from Maintenance.”

  “Put it through,” I said.

  The image of a middle-aged Oriental woman appeared on the computer's holographic screen.

  “Koriba, I just received your instructions,” she said. “Are you aware that such an orbital diversion will almost certainly bring a severe climactic change to Kirinyaga?”

  “I am.”

  She frowned. “Perhaps I should word that more strongly. It will bring a cataclysmic change. This will precipitate a drought of major preportions.”

  “Have I the right to request such an orbital change or not?” I demanded.

  “Yes,” she answered. “According to your charter, you have the right. But...”

  “Then please do as I ask.”

  “You're sure you don't want to reconsider?”

  “I am sure.”

  She shrugged. “You're the boss.”

  I am glad that someone remembers that, I thought bitterly as the connection was broken and the computer screen went blank.

  * * * *

  “She talks too much, and I don't like the song she sings, but she has always seemed like a nice woman,” remarked Ndemi, staring down the hill at Mumbi's hut after I had finished instructing him in the blessing of the scarecrows. “Why did Koinnage make her leave his shamba?”

  “Koinnage did not make her leave,” I answered. “She chose to leave.”

  Ndemi frowned, for such behavior was beyond his experience. “What reason did she have for leaving?”

  “Her reason is not important,” I said. “What is important is that the Kikuyu live as families, and she refuses to do so.”

  “Is she crazy?” asked Ndemi.

  “No. Just stubborn.”

  “If she is not crazy, then she must think she has a good reason for living on your hill,” he persisted. “What is it?”

  “She still wants to do the work she has always done,” I replied. “It is not crazy. In fact, in a way it is admirable—but in this society it is wrong.”

  “She is very foolish,” said Ndemi. “When I am mundumugu, I will do no more work than you do.”

  Has everyone on Kirinyaga conspired to try my patience? I wondered. Aloud I said: “I work very hard.”

  “You work at your magic, and you call down the rains, and you bless the fields and the cattle,” conceded Ndemi. “But you never carry water, or feed your animals, or clean you hut, or tend your gardens.”

  “The mundumugu does not do such things.”

  “That is why she is foolish. She could live like a mundumugu and have all these things done for her, and yet she chooses not to.”

  I shook my head. “She is foolish because she gave up everything she had to
come to Kirinyaga and live the traditional life of the Kikuyu, and now she has broken with those traditions.”

  “You will have to punish her,” said Ndemi thoughtfully.

  “Yes.”

  “I hope the punishment is is not a painful one,” he continued, “for she is very much like you, and I do not think being punished will make her change her ways.”

  I looked down the hill at the old woman's hut and wondered if he was right.

  * * * *

  Within a month Kirinyaga was feeling the effects of the drought. The days were long and hot and dry, and the river that ran through our village was very low.

  Each morning I awoke to the sound of Mumbi singing to herself as she climbed the hill after filling her water gourd. Each afternoon I threw stones at her goats and chickens as they grazed closer and closer to my boma, and wondered how much longer it would be before she returned to her shamba. Each evening I received a message from Maintenance, asking if I wanted to make an orbital adjustment that would bring rain to my world.

  From time to time Koinnage would trudge up the long, dusty path from the village and speak to Mumbi. I never eavesdropped, so I did not know the details of what they said to each other, but always it would end the same way: with Koinnage losing his temper and yelling at his mother, and with the old woman glaring at him obstinately as he walked back to the village, yelling imprecations over his shoulder.

  One afternoon Shima, Ndemi's mother, came to my boma.

  “Jambo, Shima,” I greeted her.

  “Jambo, Koriba,” she said.

  I waited patiently for her to tell me the purpose of her visit.

  “Has Ndemi been a good assistant to you, Koriba?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And he learns his lessons well?”

  “Very well.”

  “You have never questioned his loyalty?”

  “I have never had cause to,” I replied.

  “Then why do you make his family suffer?” she asked. “Our cattle are weak, and our crops are dying. Why do you not bring the drought only to Koinnage's fields?”

  “The drought will stop when Mumbi returns to her shamba,” I said firmly. “She is the one who will decide when it ends, not I. Perhaps you should speak to her.”

  “I did,” said Shima.

  “And?”

  “She told me to speak to you.”

  “She brought the drought to Kirinyaga,” I said. “She can end it whenever she wishes.”

  “She is not the mundumugu. You are.”

  “I have acted to preserve our Utopia.”

  She smiled bitterly. “You have spent too long on your hill, mundumugu,” she said. “Come down to the village. Look at the animals and the crops and the children, and then tell me how you are preserving our Utopia.”

  She turned and walked back down the hill before I could think of an answer.

  * * * *

  Six weeks after the drought commenced, the Council of Elders came to my boma as I was giving Ndemi his daily instruction.

  “Jambo,” I greeted them. “I trust you are well?”

  “We are not well, Koriba,” said old Siboki, who seemed to be their spokesman.

  “I am sorry to hear that,” I said sincerely.

  “We must talk, Koriba,” continued Siboki.

  “As you wish.”

  “We know that Mumbi is wrong,” he began. “Once a woman has raised her children and seen her husband die, she must live with her son's family on his shamba, and allow them to care for her. It is the law, and it is foolish for her to want to live anywhere else.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “We all agree,” he said. “And if you must punish her to make her obey our laws, then so be it.” He paused. “But you are punishing everyone, when only Mumbi has broken the law. It is not fair that we should suffer for her transgression.”

  “I wish things could be otherwise,” I said sincerely.

  “Then can you not intercede with Ngai on our behalf?” he persisted.

  “I doubt that He will listen,” I said. “It would be better if you spoke to Mumbi and convinced her to return to her shamba.”

  “We have tried,” said Siboki.

  “Then you must try again.”

  “We will,” he said without much hope. “But will you at least ask Ngai to end the drought? You are the mundumugu; surely He will listen to you.”

  “I will ask Him,” I said. “But Ngai is a harsh god. He brought forth the drought because Mumbi broke the law; He almost certainly will not bring the rains until she is ready to once again obey the law.”

  “But you will ask?”

  “I will ask,” I answered him.

  They had nothing further to say, and after an awkward silence they left. Ndemi approached me when they were too far away to hear him.

  “Ngai did not call forth the drought,” he said. “You did, by speaking to the box in your hut.”

  I stared at him without replying.

  “And if you brought the drought,” he continued, “then surely you can end it.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Then why do you not do so, since it has brought suffering to many people, and not just to Mumbi?”

  “Listen to me carefully, Ndemi,” I said, “and remember my words, for someday you shall be the mundumugu, and this is your most important lesson.”

  “I am listening,” he said, squatting down and staring at me intently.

  “Of all the things on Kirinyaga, of all our laws and traditions and customs, the most important is this: the mundumugu is the most powerful man in our society. Not because of his physical strength, for as you see I am a wrinkled old man, but because he is the interpretor of our culture. It is he who determines what it right and what is wrong, and his authority must never be questioned.”

  “Are you saying that I cannot ask why you will not bring the rains,” asked Ndemi, confused.

  “No,” I said. “I am saying that the mundumugu is the rock upon which the Kikuyu build their culture, and because of that, he can never show weakness.” I paused. “I wish I had not threatened to bring forth the drought. It had been a long, irritating day, and I was tired, and many people had been very foolish that day—but I did promise that there would be a drought, and now, if I show weakness, if I bring the rains, then sooner or later everyone in the village will challenge the mundumugu's authority ... and without authority, there is no structure to our lives.” I looked into his eyes. “Do you understand what I am saying to you, Ndemi?”

  “I think so,” he said uncertainly.

  “Someday it will be you, rather than I, who speaks to the computer. You must fully understand me before that day arrives.”

  * * * *

  There came a morning, three months into the drought, that Ndemi entered my hut and woke me by touching my shoulder.

  “What is it?” I asked, sitting up.

  “I cannot fill your gourds with water today,” said Ndemi. “The river has dried up.”

  “Then we will dig a well at the foot of the hill,” I said, walking out into my boma and wrapping my blanket around my shoulders to protect me from the dry, cold morning air.

  Mumbi was singing to herself, as usual, as she lit a fire in front of her hut. I stared at her for a moment, then turned back to Ndemi.

  “Soon she will leave,” I said confidently.

  “Will you leave?” he responded.

  I shook my head. “This is my home.”

  “This is her home, too,” said Ndemi.

  “Her home is with Koinnage,” I said irritably.

  “She doesn't think so.”

  “She must have water to live. She will have to return to her shamba soon.”

  “Maybe,” said Ndemi without much conviction.

  “Why should you think otherwise?”

  “Because I passed her well as I climbed the hill,” he answered. He glanced down at Mumbi, who was now cooking her morning meal. “She is a very stubborn old
woman,” he added with more than a touch of admiration.

  I made no answer.

  * * * *

  “Your shade tree is dying, Koriba.”

  I looked up and saw Mumbi standing beside my boma.

  “If you do not water it soon, it will wither, and you will be very uncomfortable.” She paused. “I have extra thatch from my roof. You may have it and spread it across the branches of your acacia, if you wish.”

  “Why do you offer me this, when you yourself are responsible for the drought?” I asked suspiciously.

  “To show you that I am your neighbor and not your enemy,” she replied.

  “You disobeyed the law,” I said. “That makes you the enemy of our culture.”

  “It is an evil law,” she replied. “For more than four months I have lived here on this hill. Every day I have gathered firewood, and I have woven two new blankets, and I have cooked my meals, and I fetched the water before the river ran dry, and now I bring water from my well. Why should I be cast aside when I can do all these things?”

  “You are not being cast aside, Mumbi,” I said. “It is precisely because you have done these things for so many years that you are finally allowed to rest and let others do them.”

  “But they are all I have,” she protested. “What is the use of being alive if I cannot do the things that I know how to do?”

  “The old have always been cared for by their families, as have the weak and the sick,” I said. “It is our custom.”

  “It is a good custom,” she said. “But I do not feel old.” She paused. “Do you know the only time in my life I felt old? It was when I was not allowed to do anything in my own shamba.” She frowned. “It was not a good feeling.”

  “You must come to terms with your age, Mumbi,” I said.

  “I did that when I moved to this hill,” she replied. “Now you must come to terms with your drought.”

  * * * *

  The news began to reach my ears during the fourth month.

  Njoro had slain his cattle, and was now keeping gerunuk, which do not drink water but lick the dew off the leaves, this in spite of the fact that according to our tradition, the Kikuyu do not raise or eat wild game.

  Kambela and Njogu had taken their families and emigrated back to Kenya.