Kirinyaga Read online

  I paused to let them consider what I had said, and then continued speaking: “Kirinyaga is like the savannah. If we do not leave the old and the feeble out for the hyenas, the hyenas will starve. If the hyenas starve, the grass eaters will become so numerous that there is no land left for our cattle and goats to graze. If the old and the feeble do not die when Ngai decrees it, then soon we will not have enough food to go around.”

  I picked up a stick and balanced it precariously on my forefinger.

  “This stick,” I said, “is the Kikuyu people, and my finger is Kirinyaga. They are in perfect balance.” I stared at the neighboring chief. “But what will happen if I alter the balance, and put my finger here?” I asked, gesturing to the end of the stick.

  “The stick will fall to the ground.”

  “And here?” I asked, pointing to a stop an inch away from the center.

  “It will fall.”

  “Thus is it with us,” I explained. “Whether we yield on one point or all points, the result will be the same: The Kikuyu will fall as surely as the stick will fall. Have we learned nothing from our past? We must adhere to our traditions; they are all that we have!”

  “But Maintenance will not allow us to do so!” protested Koinnage.

  “They are not warriors, but civilized men,” I said, allowing a touch of contempt to creep into my voice. “Their chiefs and their mundumugus will not send them to Kirinyaga with guns and spears. They will issue warnings and findings and declarations, and finally, when that fails, they will go to the Eutopian Court and plead their case, and the trial will be postponed many times and reheard many more times.” I could see them finally relaxing, and I smiled confidently at them. “Each of you will have died from the burden of your years before Maintenance does anything other than talk. I am your mundumugw, I have lived among civilized men, and I tell you that this is the truth.”

  The neighboring chief stood up and faced me. “I will send for you when the twins are born,” he pledged.

  “I will come,” I promised him.

  We spoke further, and then the meeting ended and the old men began wandering off to their bomas, while I looked to the future, which I could see more clearly than Koinnage or the Elders.

  I walked through the village until I found the bold young Ndemi, brandishing his spear and hurling it at a buffalo he had constructed out of dried grasses.

  “fambo, Koriba!” he greeted me.

  “fambo, my brave young warrior,” I replied, “I have been practicing, as you ordered.”

  “I thought you wanted to hunt the gazelle,” I noted.

  “Gazelles are for children,” he answered. “I will slay mbogo, the buffalo.”

  “Mbogo may feel differently about it,” I said.

  “So much the better,” he said confidently. “I have no wish to kill an animal as it runs away from me.”

  “And when will you go out to slay the fierce mbogo?”

  He shrugged. “When I am more accurate.” He smiled up at me. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

  I stared at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then spoke: “Tomorrow is a long time away We have business tonight.”

  “What business?” he asked.

  “You must find ten friends, none of them yet of circumcision age, and tell them to come to the pond within the forest to the south. They must come after the sun has set, and you must tell them that Koriba the mundumugu commands that they tell no one, not even their parents, that they are coming.” I paused. “Do you understand, Ndemi?”

  “I understand.”

  “Then go,” I said. “Bring my message to them.”

  He retrieved his spear from the straw buffalo and set off at a trot, young and tall and strong and fearless.

  You are the future, I thought, as I watched him run toward the village. Not Koinnage, not myself, not even the young bridegroom Njogu, for their time will have come and gone before the battle is joined. It is you, Ndemi, upon whom Kirinyaga must depend if it is to survive.

  Once before the Kikuyu have had to fight for their freedom. Under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta, whose name has been forgotten by most of your parents, we took the terrible oath of Mau Mau, and we maimed and we killed and we committed such atrocities that finally we achieved Uhuru, for against such butchery civilized men have no defense but to depart.

  And tonight, young Ndemi, while your parents are asleep, you and your companions will meet me deep in the woods, and you in your turn and they in theirs will learn one last tradition of the Kikuyu, for I will invoke not only the strength of Ngai but also the indomitable spirit of Jomo Kenyatta. I will administer a hideous oath and force you to do unspeakable things to prove your fealty, and I will teach each of you, in turn, how to administer the oath to those who come after you.

  There is a season for all things: for birth, for growth, for death. There is unquestionably a season for Utopia, but it will have to wait.

  For the season of Uhuru is upon us.

  2

  FOR I HAVE TOUCHED THE SKY

  {JANUARY 2131}

  There was a time when men had wings.

  Ngai, who sits alone on His golden throne atop Kirinyaga, gave men the gift of flight, so that they might reach the succulent fruits on the highest branches of the trees. But one man, a son of Gikuyu, who was himself the first man, saw the eagle and the vulture riding high upon the winds, and spreading his wings, he joined them. He circled higher and higher, and soon he soared far above all other flying things.

  Then, suddenly, the hand of Ngai reached out and grabbed the son of Gikuyu.

  “What have I done that you should grab me thus?” asked the son of Gikuyu.

  “I live atop Kirinyaga because it is the top of the world,” answered Ngai, “and no one's head may be higher than my own.”

  And so saying, Ngai plucked the wings from the son of Gikuyu, and then took the wings away from all men, so that no man could ever again rise higher than His head.

  And that is why all of Gikuyu's descendants look at the birds with a sense of loss and envy, and why they no longer eat the succulent fruits from the highest branches of the trees.

  We have many birds on the world of Kirinyaga, which was named for the holy mountain where Ngai dwells. We brought them along with our other animals when we received our charter from the Eutopian Council and departed from a Kenya that no longer had any meaning for true members of the Kikuyu tribe. Our new world is home to the maribou and the vulture, the ostrich and the fish eagle, the weaver and the heron, and many other species. Even I, who am the mundu-mugu, delight in their many colors, and find solace in their music. I have spent many afternoons seated in front of my borna, my back propped up against an ancient acacia tree, watching the profusion of colors and listening to the melodic songs as the birds come to slake their thirst in the river that winds through our village.

  It was on one such afternoon that Kamari, a young girl who was not yet of circumcision age, walked up the long, winding path that separates my boma from the village, holding something small and gray in her hands.

  “fambo, Koriba,” she greeted me.

  “fambo, Kamari,” I answered her. “What have you brought to me, child?”

  “This,” she said, holding out a young pygmy falcon that struggled weakly to escape her grasp. “I found him in my family's shamba. He cannot fly.”

  “He looks fully fledged,” I noted, getting to my feet. Then I saw that one of his wings was held at an awkward angle. “Ah!” I said. “He has broken his wing.”

  “Can you make him well, munduniugu?” asked Kamari.

  I examined the wing briefly, while she held the young falcon's head away from me. Then I stepped back.

  “I can make him well, Kamari,” I said. “But I cannot make him fly. The wing will heal, but it will never be strong enough to bear his weight again. I think we will destroy him.”

  “No!” she exclaimed, pulling the falcon back. “You will make him live, and I will care for him!”

  I
stared at the bird for a moment, then shook my head. “He will not wish to live,” I said at last.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he has ridden high upon the warm winds.”

  “I do not understand,” said Kamari, frowning.

  “Once a bird has touched the sky,” I explained, “he can never be content to spend his days on the ground.”

  “I will make him content,” she said with determination. “You will heal him and I will care for him, and he will live.”

  “I will heal him and you will care for him,” I said. “But,” I added, “he will not live.”

  “What is your fee, Koriba?” she asked, suddenly businesslike.

  “I do not charge children,” I answered. “I will visit your father tomorrow, and he will pay me.”

  She shook her head adamantly. “This is my bird, I will pay the fee.”

  “Very well,” I said, admiring her spirit, for most children—and all adults—are terrified of their mundumugu, and would never openly contradict or disagree with him. “For one month you will clean my boma every morning and every afternoon. You will lay out my sleeping blankets, and keep my water gourd filled, and you will see that I have kindling for my fire.”

  “That is fair,” she said after a moment's consideration. Then she added: “What if the bird dies before the month is over?”

  “Then you will learn that a mundumugu knows more than a little Kikuyu girl,” I said.

  She set her jaw. “He will not die.” She paused. “Will you fix his wing now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will help.”

  I shook my head. “You will build a cage in which to confine him, for if he tries to move his wing too soon, he will break it again and then I will surely have to destroy him.”

  She handed the bird to me. “I will be back soon,” she promised, racing off toward her shamba.

  I took the falcon into my hut. He was too weak to struggle very much, and he allowed me to tie his beak shut. Then I began the slow task of splinting his broken wing and binding it against his body to keep it motionless. He shrieked in pain as I manipulated the bones together, but otherwise he simply stared unblinking at me, and within ten minutes the job was finished.

  Kamari returned an hour later, holding a small wooden cage in her hands.

  “Is this large enough, Koriba?” she asked.

  I held it up and examined it.

  “It is almost too large,” I replied. “He must not be able to move his wing until it has healed.”

  “He won't,” she promised. “I will watch him all day long, every day.”

  “You will watch him all day long, every day?” I repeated, amused.

  “Yes.”

  “Then who will clean my hut and my boma, and who will fill my gourd with water?”

  “I will carry his cage with me when I come,” she replied.

  “The cage will be much heavier when the bird is in it,” I pointed out.

  “When I am a woman, I will carry far heavier loads on my back, for I shall have to till the fields and gather the firewood for my husband's boma,” she said. “This will be good practice.” She paused. “Why do you smile at me, Koriba?”

  “I am not used to being lectured to by uncircumcised children,” I replied with a smile.

  “I was not lecturing,” she answered with dignity. “I was explaining!”

  I held a hand up to shade my eyes from the afternoon sun.

  “Are you not afraid of me, little Kamari?” I asked.

  “Why should I be?”

  “Because I am the mundumugu”

  “That just means you are smarter than the others,” she said with a shrug. She threw a stone at a chicken that was approaching her cage, and it raced away, squawking its annoyance. “Someday I shall be as smart as you are.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded confidently. “Already I can count higher than my father, and I can remember many things.”

  “What kind of things?” I asked, turning slightly as a hot breeze blew a swirl of dust about us.

  “Do you remember the story of the honey bird that you told to the children of the village before the long rains?”

  I nodded.

  “I can repeat it,” she said.

  “You mean you can remember it.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “I can repeat every word that you said.”

  I sat down and crossed my legs. “Let me hear,” I said, staring off into the distance and idly watching a pair of young men tending their cattle.

  She hunched her shoulders, so that she would appear as bent with age as I myself am, and then, in a voice that sounded like a youthful replica of my own, she began to speak, mimicking my gestures.

  “There is a little brown honey bird,” she began. “He is very much like a sparrow, and as friendly. He will come to your boma and call to you, and as you approach him he will fly up and lead you to a hive, and then wait while you gather grass and set fire to it and smoke out the bees. But you must always11—she emphasized the word, just as I had done—”leave some honey for him, for if you take it all, the next time he will lead you into the jaws of fisi, the hyena, or perhaps into the desert where there is no water and you will die of thirst.” Her story finished, she stood upright and smiled at me. “You see?” she said proudly.

  “I see,” I said, brushing away a large fly that had lit on my cheek.

  “Did I do it right?” she asked.

  “You did it right.”

  She stared at me thoughtfully. “Perhaps when you die, I will become the mundumugu.”

  “Do I seem that close to death?” I asked.

  “Well,” she answered, “you are very old and bent and wrinkled, and you sleep too much. But I will be just as happy if you do not die right away.”

  “I shall try to make you just as happy,” I said ironically. “Now take your falcon home.”

  I was about to instruct her concerning his needs, but she spoke first.

  “He will not want to eat today. But starting tomorrow, I will give him large insects, and at least one lizard every day. And he must always have water.”

  “You are very observant, Kamari.”

  She smiled at me again, and then ran off toward her boma.

  She was back at dawn the next morning, carrying the cage with her. She placed it in the shade, then filled a small container with water from one of my gourds and set it inside the cage.

  “How is your bird this morning?” I asked, sitting close to my fire, for even though the planetary engineers of the Eutopian Council had given Kirinyaga a climate identical to Kenya's, the sun had not yet warmed the morning air.

  Kamari frowned. “He has not eaten yet.”

  “He will, when he gets hungry enough,” I said, pulling my blanket more tightly around my shoulders. “He is used to swooping down on his prey from the sky.”

  “He drinks his water, though,” she noted.

  “That is a good sign.”

  “Can you not cast a spell that will heal him all at once?”

  “The price would be too high,” I said, for I had foreseen her question. “This way is better.”

  “How high?”

  “ Too high,” I repeated, closing the subject. “Now, do you not have work to do?”

  “Yes, Koriba.”

  She spent the next few minutes gathering kindling for my fire and filling my gourd from the river. Then she went into my hut to clean it and straighten my sleeping blankets. She emerged a moment later with a book in her hand.

  “What is this, Koriba?” she asked.

  “Who told you that you could touch your mundumugus possessions?” I asked sternly.

  “How can I clean them without touching them?” she replied with no show of fear. “What is it?”

  “It is a book.”

  “What is a book, Koriba?”

  “It is not for you to know,” I said. “Put it back.”

  “Shall I tell you what I think it is?”
she asked.

  “Tell me,” I said, curious to hear her answer.

  “Do you know how you draw signs on the ground when you cast the bones to bring the rains? I think that a book is a collection of signs.”

  “You are a very bright little girl, Kamari.”

  “I told you that I was,” she said, annoyed that I had not accepted her statement as a self-evident truth. She looked at the book for a moment, then held it up. “What do the signs mean?”

  “Different things,” I said.

  11 What things?”

  “It is not necessary for the Kikuyu to know.”

  “ But you know”

  “I am the mundumugu”

  “Can anyone else on Kirinyaga read the signs?”

  “Your own chief, Koinnage, and two other chiefs can read the signs,” I answered, sorry now that she had charmed me into this conversation, for I could foresee its direction.

  “But you are all old men,” she said. “You should teach me, so when you all die someone can read the signs.”

  “These signs are not important,” I said. “They were created by the Europeans. The Kikuyu had no need for books before the Europeans came to Kenya; we have no need for them on Kirinyaga, which is our own world. When Koinnage and the other chiefs die, everything will be as it was long ago.”

  “Are they evil signs, then?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “They are not evil. They just have no meaning for the Kikuyu. They are the white man's signs.”

  She handed the book to me. “Would you read me one of the signs?”

  “Why?”

  “I am curious to know what kind of signs the white men made.”

  I stared at her for a long minute, trying to make up my mind. Finally I nodded my assent.

  “Just this once,” I said. “Never again.”

  “Just this once,” she agreed.

  I thumbed through the book, which was a Swahili translation of Elizabethan poetry, selected one at random, and read it to her:

  Come live with me and be my love,