African Nights Read online

  Cattle are the wealth that the God Ngai – the sky in Maasai – had bestowed for ever on the Maasai race, and it was within this enclosure that their livestock spent the night, each animal packed close to the other, sheltered from predators and cattle rustlers.

  The woman was dressed in goatskins, reddened with fat and ochre. From her right ear, stretched down to her shoulder, hung a tin ornament polished like silver and shaped like an arrow. Her left ear was studded with an old beer bottle top, shiny as a new coin.

  Her right leg, from ankle to knee, was encased in a spiralling brass bracelet, so tight that it scarcely allowed any space for her slim bird-like leg. This was so skeletal that it reminded me of the ancient Roman shinbones I had once found as a child in a newly ploughed field I was exploring with my father in the countryside around Quarto d’Altino. How far from Africa my childhood seemed, yet how close.

  Her ornaments showed that this woman was married. Innumerable rows of small coloured beads swayed gently from her neck, on her forehead, and around her stunning black eyes, like a dancing mask. They were threaded with infinite patience, extravagant skill and a symmetrical elegance that no mirror had suggested. They framed her tilted eyes, around which countless flies, motionless and undisturbed, formed dainty patterns like points d’esprit on the lacy veil of an Edwardian bonnet.

  I poured the salt straight from the plastic bag on to her pink palm, proffered as a cup held between her slender black fingers. She licked it laughing, greedily, like the most sought after delicacy. Only when she had finished, and I had put the remainder of the packet in her hand, did she look me straight in the face and begin to ask questions. Because she spoke Swahili, which was unusual in those days for a Highland Maasai, I could understand her.

  Our talk was oddly feminine and for a time we became as close as one can only be over a handful of salt in the solitude of a new-born day, when the Maasai men, carrying their spears against lions and thieves, had gone out grazing their herds among far-off lowings, and the European men, in a hurry to follow fresh buffalo tracks, had forgotten to drink all their tea.

  The only sign left of Paolo that morning was a still steaming cup, and the squashed stub of his first cigarette. Quick to notice these traces of a male presence, ‘Wapi bwana yako?’ she asked.

  ‘Where is your husband?’ But before I could answer about mine, she told me of hers. Her story was typical of all the young beauties of her tribe and her age-group, just after circumcision.

  A handsome moran, or young warrior, who had already won, by raiding, enough cattle to afford a wife, had shown his interest by offering her a necklace, which she had accepted. Her parents then waited in anticipation for her betrothed to come, according to custom, with his first gift of honey. This, she and the girls circumcised with her – and because of this forever her sisters – mixed with milk and then drank together.

  Soon after, vast quantities of honey had been offered by the future groom, and fermented and distilled into a heady liquor that the elders drank amidst celebration. At this stage the young man had been summoned, and was told – may God listen – that his ritual gifts had been accepted and his request granted. No one else might now come to claim his bride.

  Her old mother had received a lamb, and her father a calf and cured sheepskins with which to prepare the wedding garment. Two calves and a bull, all white like the cool new moon, had been brought by the groom on the wedding day. As prescribed by custom, they had to be healthy and strong, without marks to scar the soft sun-warmed hides. The unfortunate sacrificial victims of African celebrations – a ram and two hoggets – had been slaughtered, and the wretched ram’s fat used as a ceremonial ointment.

  On the given day, after the sun had risen like an incandescent calabash on the indigo horizon, her friends sang a high-pitched song of joy, her heart leapt like an impala in the happiness of her special ceremony, and the old women had come. They had doused her with that brew of honey and, helped by her proud mother, they had fixed the ornaments to her leg and ears with elaborate ritual.

  I listened, fascinated. The story came in bouts, prompted by questions, and facilitated by half a pound of sugar-cane that she licked casually and with glee, straight from the bag. The sun rose high, and the cicadas’ song grew deafening, dry like the sound of twigs beaten together by a thousand hidden hands.

  The tall slim woman yawned and stretched. I understood that for today her story was finished. She looked around and her eyes focused on the green cake of soap, drying on a stone, with which Paolo had washed his hands. She pointed at it with a sudden jerk of her chin, emphasizing her desire by pretending to spread it onto her arm and smelling her skin with a beatific smile. I passed it to her and she began to smooth it all over her dry skin like a cream, moaning with pleasure. The flies, uncaring, flew dozily from the restless eyelids, and settled back there immediately.

  I asked how many children she had borne. She thought a bit about it, and finally opened three fingers, but, as an afterthought, she slapped her stomach energetically:

  ‘Mimi ni mimba tena,’ she announced proudly, with a toss of her head. ‘I am pregnant again.’

  In her voice was a ring, like a fresh bell at dawn.

  I was surprised by her thinness and I told her so. She explained that the Maasai were careful not to let pregnant mothers get too fat, as this was regarded as dangerous for the baby. How modern. But pregnant women had the unique privilege of eating meat: an astonishing luxury for this tribe which feed purely on the blood, urine and curdled milk of their cattle. Only stolen meat is normally eaten, never that of their own livestock.

  She rose with one fluid movement, and measured me with a cocky, challenging look in her eyes. Suddenly curious she asked:

  ‘Bwana yako ulilipa ngombe na njau ngapi kwa baba yako kuolewa wewe?’ ‘How many cows and calves did your bwana pay your father for you?’

  Slightly humiliated by the inadequacy of our European traditions, I tried to explain that in the land called Ulaia, where I came from, we followed other desturi. Desturi means custom in Swahili, and is a magic word to unfold the inexplicable. Customs are sacred, unquestionable, instantly accepted without reserve. Often, hiding behind the excuse of my desturi had saved me from potentially embarrassing explanations.

  It was clear that the woman considered this particular desturi undignified, and for a moment it looked so to me also. She made no comment, just lifted her shoulder, almost imperceptibly, to dismiss that incomprehensible European meanness.

  With a tinkling of anklets she stood tall, light in her thinness, without leaving any mark on the dust where we had sat together. Then, with a natural grace, she parted the skin garment which, like a peplum, covered her chest, and exposed two pendulous breasts, swollen like ripe oblong gourds. With thumb and index she lifted one, and squeezed it with the expert gesture of the milker. A long opalescent spray spurted out darting inches from my face, hitting the bushes with a sharp noise.

  With a proud jerk of her head she invited me to do the same. But before I could admit my defeat, I could detect in her frank, laughing stare a teasing note. A sudden breeze ran unexpected through the treetops, touched our faces and was soon forgotten.

  She went away amongst the low sage bushes, without a word, her head held high, as when she had first appeared.

  5

  Mwtua

  Dis aliter visum.*

  Virgil, Aeneid, II, 428

  He was a little man with a perennial grin. His short greying hair, small eyes brightened by a continuous smile, his readiness to obey or volunteer for any work and his intrinsic innocence, were like a peasant-saint’s in biblical tales. He had been with me for many years, looking after my house in Nairobi, a reliable fellow respected by all, kind to children and adored by dogs. He was not intelligent, on the contrary perhaps a bit simple, and his sentences often became tangled in a painful stutter, but his good nature and willingness amply made up for his lack of initiative.

  I had noticed that recently he had bee
n looking old and become rather forgetful. His stammer had increased, making it more painful for him to answer quickly, and harder for me to understand what he wanted to say. He ironed perfectly but his eyesight seemed to be failing him, and often I found strange garments mixed up with mine and unknown pullovers amongst my shirts.

  He looked tired and he shuffled. I began to wonder if he should not retire, and go back to Kitui where he had come from, to look after his grandchildren, and the small shamba he had acquired over the years.

  He did not want to go; and as if sensing that I was about to call him to explain that the time had arrived for him to return home and retire in peace, he seemed to double his efforts, to work more and longer hours, as if he wanted to prove to me that, in fact, he still had many years left of active work.

  One night, coming back late from a dinner party to my house in Gigiri, instead of the usual guard, a strange little man, trussed up in a too-large nightwatchman’s greatcoat, trotted up to the gate and fidgeted endlessly with keys before he finally managed to open it. The oversized helmet on the small grey head had slipped down almost to cover his eyes, but revealed a happy, slightly fanatic grin: it was Mwtua. The askari had been taken ill by a sudden attack of malaria, so he had volunteered to help and was spending all night up in the chill, faithfully guarding my house.

  Despite all this, I realized that Mwtua had to go, but I wanted to find the right opportunity to tell him.

  It was a foggy morning in Nairobi, and when I tried to talk to my ranch on the Laikipia Security network, my radio did not seem to be receiving properly. It had been raining heavily the night before and I wondered if the unusual amount of static meant that a branch had fallen on the aerial. I called Wangari, the maid who was Mwtua’s niece, and asked her to go and find a gardener to discover if the aerial was still in the upright position. She was away a few minutes.

  ‘Ndio,’ she explained. ‘Aerial naaunguka, lakini Mwtua nasema yeye nawesa kutanganesa.’

  ‘Yes. The aerial has fallen, but Mwtua said he can fix it.’

  I smiled. It was so typical of him. It was naturally out of the question. The aerial was very high, tied to the top of the tallest tree. The radio people from Wilken had come with a special ladder to do it. It was impossible to reach it otherwise.

  ‘I shall call the maintenance people,’ I said to Wangari. ‘Please tell Mwtua we will take care of it.’

  The telephone was ringing, so I went to answer it. Then I tried to call the radio workshop, but the line was engaged.

  I noticed that in the meantime it had started drizzling again. I went to look out of my window. A short wooden ladder was leaning against the Cape chestnut in the middle of the lawn, to which the aerial had been fixed.

  A ladder? Why? With a sudden premonition, I reached for my glasses. I looked. Sure enough, amongst the leafy branches, in his green uniform and practically camouflaged, Mwtua was climbing, agile and fast, towards the aerial. I caught my breath: this was impossible. The branches were so thin towards the top, surely they would not support a human body.

  The tribesmen of Kisii and Mkamba are forest people; they love working with wood and they know trees. As children they learn to climb for fruit and honey or to steal birds’ eggs, while they tend the goats and cattle in the forests. Still, that tree was too high and wet with rain, its branches swaying, unsafe. Mwtua was too old to go climbing. I was about to open the window to call him down, when something about him made me stop.

  It was as if a change had come upon him on that tree. His old man’s movements had been shed like old skin. A young Mwtua was climbing, alert and nimble, with soft fluid gestures. His thin legs and arms seemed to wrap themselves easily around the branches with a prehensile skill, inherited from bygone arboreal generations. But what was most extraordinary was the transformation of his eyes. They were open and enlarged so that the white part seemed huge, almost phosphorescent, and their still gaze was fixed like an animal’s. He reminded me uncannily of a bushbaby I had once kept.

  I stopped breathless, looking at him mesmerized.

  I did not know that downstairs our ayah, Wanjiru, was looking up to Mwtua from the kitchen window with the same apprehension. She told me later that her impressions of Mwtua were identical to mine.

  Something had definitely happened to him up that tree.

  So deep seemed his transformation, and so remote was he, absorbed in his world of leaves and air, that I was afraid to startle him by opening the window. I decided to attract his attention by rapping on the glass instead, but he did not seem to hear. Then he looked up, like a bird surprised by a strange sound. At that moment the telephone rang in my room again and I went to answer. I was replacing the receiver when I next looked out.

  It was raining heavily now, and through the rain I saw the treetop oscillating. Then, in front of my eyes, to my eternal horror, Mwtua’s lithe body precipitated, with the slow motion of a nightmare, head first in a shower of leaves, no different from a leaf himself, on to the lawn, to lie there, motionless. A small broken branch fell with him and the radio cable, like a useless liana, swung forlorn in the air. I opened the window to see better.

  He lay in a crumpled heap, pathetically small in his green clothes and, with a lump in my throat, I was sure he was dead. No one could have fallen on his head from that height without breaking his neck.

  After what seemed a very long stillness, there was a sudden flutter of activity. Like spectators invading the stage after the show has ended, the gardener, the shamba woman and Wanjiru ran towards Mwtua as if they had all been waiting to spring into action. At the same time Wangari put her apron over her head, threw up her hands to the sky and, in a new wild voice which sent a chill down my spine, started wailing in an unknown language an eerie and ancient song of mourning.

  Wanjiru was on him. I noticed she had kicked her shoes off to run faster.

  ‘Don’t touch him!’ I screamed from the window, afraid that unskilled handling would make him worse if, by some quirk of fate, he was still alive.

  ‘Kwisha kufa?’ ‘Is he dead?’ I called out, praying that this nightmare would finish, hoping to turn back the clock.

  ‘Badu!’ ‘Not yet.’ Wanjiru screamed back.

  The doctor, then.

  I realized that every second could be crucial, and that the right action could make all the difference. With flying fingers, I dialled the home number of the Italian brain-surgeon, a great friend, whom I contact in any emergency. It was a short cut to avoid lengthy explanations to a telephone operator.

  ‘Marieke,’ I begged his wife, ‘Mwtua has fallen from a tree and I think he is dying. Please tell Renato I am bringing him to Nairobi Hospital now.’

  A former nurse herself, she did not waste time with idle questions. I slammed the phone down and ran downstairs.

  Surrounded by moaning people, Mwtua was curled up in the foetal position, with his eyes shut. Some mown grass was stuck to his cheek. He looked quite dead.

  I felt the great inner silence which anticipates irreversible doom, and in this soundless world I knelt at his side. I forced myself to open one of his eyelids – the skin was cold and clammy – and touched the pupil lightly with a leaf. To my overwhelming relief, the eye contracted, flickered. A shiver ran through his body: he was alive!

  Sound crept back in my consciousness, and I became aware of a rasping breathing that came from his chest in bursts. I put my hand on his back and massaged him, calling him softly. Pearly saliva, mixed with grass fragments, frothed from his lips.

  We drove him to hospital in the back of my car, wrapped in a blanket, writhing but unconscious, and jerking in his sleep as if he dreamt he was still climbing the tree.

  He was put straight into the Intensive Care unit, and the hospital machinery organized by Renato Ruberti began to hum efficiently around him. Blood pressure, temperature, X-rays, physical tests, scans and all kinds of examinations were performed quickly and smoothly. Then Renato looked up at me, while still holding Mwtua’s wrist. For
a long moment his intelligent eyes behind his spectacles stared into mine before he spoke.

  I swallowed.

  A broken neck? A fractured skull? A smashed thorax? An irreversible coma? Perennial brain damage? Death in a few minutes?

  A sudden grin split his face in two.

  ‘You will not believe it,’ he drawled in Italian. ‘He has nothing wrong with him at all. Only a slight concussion. The tree was thirty metres tall you said?’ He shook his head. ‘Not a cracked rib, and not a scratch. He does not even need a plaster.’

  The staff howled, accepted his revival as an act of magic, and praised God – who decides who should live and who should die – because in his wisdom he had spared Mwtua, who knew no evil. Masses were celebrated at the mission church back in his village, and special tribal ceremonies of thanksgiving, so that the new and old gods might be appeased.

  As a precaution I kept him for a week – during which he mostly slept and was woken regularly only to be hand-fed – under observation in the Intensive Care unit and Special Attention ward at the hospital.

  After that a stream of people came to see him. The visitors looked at him in silence and awe, a respect and consideration reserved only for a shaman or muganga: they declared there had been a miracle.

  In their stories the tree became taller and taller, a holy force had lifted Mwtua up, a bird had delayed his fall. His adventure gained colours and new details every time it was repeated, as it is normal with legends.

  Wanjiru declared that Mwtua had survived because God loved me, and would not allow a tragedy like this to stain my boma. Amongst most Kenyan tribes, the people about to pass away were traditionally taken outside their compound, as a house where someone had died was considered impure and should normally be burnt.