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the British to release you."
"Please thank them for their efforts on my behalf," says Kenyatta. Then, "Are
they well fed and fairly treated?"
"Well, they are not in prison," answers Thuku. "At least, not all of them."
Stupid, thinks Kenyatta. Here I give you an opportunity to say what the
British wish to hear, and instead you tell me this. I doubt that they will
allow you back here again.
"More farms have been attacked?" asks Kenyatta.
Thuku nods. He doesn't care if the British hear. After all, it is in all the
papers. "Yes, and they have mutilated hundreds of cattle and goats belonging
to the British."
"They are foolish," said Kenyatta in a clear voice, loud enough to be heard
beyond the cell. "The British are not evil, merely misinformed. They are not
our enemies, and mark my words, someday they will even be our allies."
Thuku looks at him as if he has gone mad.
"They are a handsome race," continues Kenyatta. "They have strong faces and
straight backs." He switches from English to Kikuyu, which is much more
complex and difficult to learn than Swahili, and he hopes beyond the abilities
of the guards to understand. "And they have large ears," he concludes.
A look of dawning comprehension crosses James Thuku's face, and the next ten
minutes consist of nothing but a discussion of the weather, the harvest, the
marriages and births and deaths of the people
Kenyatta knows.
Finally Thuku goes to the door. "Let me out," he says. "I am done here."
The door opens, and Thuku turns to Kenyatta. "I will be back next week,
Burning Spear."
"I wouldn't bet on that," remarks one of the guards.
Neither would I
, agrees Kenyatta silently.
He waits until the evening meal is done, and the new guards have replaced the
old. Then, while there is still enough light to read, he unfolds the message
and reads it:
It has begun! Tonight we spill the blood of the British!
The news is slow to trickle in. For six months after Thuku leaves, Kenyatta is
allowed no visitors at all.
Finally he learns what has happened, not from the Kikuyu, but from the British
commander.
Kenyatta has requested an audience with him daily since he learned that he has
been denied any visitors, and finally it is granted.
The black man with the gray beard is brought, in chains, to the commander's
office. The commander sits at his desk, fanning himself in a futile attempt to
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gain some slight degree of comfort in the hot, still air.
"You wished to see me?" he demands
"I wish to know why I have not been allowed to have any visitors," says
Kenyatta.
"We're not about to let them report on their missions to you, or receive new
orders," says the
commander.
"I don't know what you are talking about," says Kenyatta.
"I'm talking about your goddamned Mau Mau, and the massacre they committed at
Lari!" yells the commander, pounding the desk with a fist. "We're not going to
let you black heathens get away with this, and when we catch Deedan
Kimathi and we will I will take great pleasure in incarcerating him in the
cell next to yours. I won't even care about your exchanging information with
him, since you're both going to be here until you rot!"
And with that, Kenyatta is escorted back to his cell.
"What happened at Lari?" he asks his guard.
"You ought to know. You were in charge of it."
"I am a prisoner who is not even in charge of his own life. How can I possibly
know what happened?"
"What happened is that your savages went out and butchered ninety-three loyal
Kikuyu in the town on
Lari," says the guard. "Chopped them to bits."
"Loyal Kikuyu," repeats Kenyatta.
"That's right."
"Loyal to who?"
The guard curses and shoves the black man into his cell.
Kenyatta knows what will come next. It will not happen to him. He's probably
safer in his cell than any of the Mau Mau are in their hideouts. But the
British cannot tolerate this. They will strike back, and in force. He has to
get word to his people, to warn them but how is he to do so when he is allowed
no visitors?
He begins smoking, begging an occasional cigarette from the guards. One day,
months later, a guard gives him two, and he thanks him profusely, lights one,
and explains that he's keeping the second one for the evening. Then, when the
guards have changed, he unwraps the cigarette and scrawls
You must get me out of here!
in Swahili on the paper. He doesn't dare write it in English for fear the
guards may find it, and by the same token he can't write it in Kikuyu for he
is sure that the prison doesn't employ any members of the Kikuyu tribe now
that they are at war with each other.
Day in and day out he stands by his window, watching and waiting with the
patience of a leopard.
Finally, almost two weeks after he has written his message and carefully
folded it up, a black groundskeeper is trimming the bushes near his window.
The man is a Samburu, and the Samburu and
Kikuyu have never been allies, but he has no choice other than to hope the man
realizes that the British are the blood enemy of both races. He coughs to
catch the man's attention, then tosses the folded note out through the bars.
The Samburu picks it up, unfolds it, stares at it.
Can you even read? wonders Kenyatta. And if you can, will you take it to my
people, or to the guards?
The Samburu stares expressionlessly at him for a long moment, then walks away.
Kenyatta waits, and waits, and waits some more. He has not seen the Samburu
again, and he has been given nothing else to write on. Burning day follows
freezing night, and he tries futilely to exercise in his nine-by-seven-foot
universe. He begs for tidbits of information, but the guards have been
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instructed not to speak to him. He thinks it has been two years since James
Thuku passed him the note, but he could be wrong: it could be eighteen months,
it could even be three years. It is hard enough to keep his sanity without
worrying about the passage of time.
And then one night he hears it: the sound of bare feet on the uneven ground
outside his window. There are more sounds, sounds he cannot identify, then a
crash!
and a thud!
, and suddenly four Kikuyu men, their faces painted for war, are in his cell,
helping him to his feet. One of them strips off his prison clothes and wraps
him in a red kikoi. Another brings his trademark flyswatter, a third his
leopardskin cap. They gently help him walk out the door.
"Where is your car?" asks Kenyatta, looking around. "I am too weak to walk all
the way to
Kikuyuland."
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