Читать книгу Dance of the Jakaranda - Peter Kimani - Страница 8

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On that balmy night in 1963, Babu’s grandson Rajan was at the Jakaranda Hotel, where he often could be found, waiting to take the stage with his band. While he was making his way toward the bathroom, the lights went out. The outage elicited a mixture of exasperated shouts, yells, and groans from bar patrons who instantly recognized the range of possibilities that the cover of darkness provided: scoundrels would flee without settling their bills, lovers would snuggle closer, and villagers would get a chance to hurl rotten eggs at the wazungu.

The latter arsenal wasn’t as crude as it sounds; it was actually a downgrade from the stones that the revelers initially took to the establishment, because for decades racial segregation had been enforced at the Jakaranda Hotel, with a notice at its entrance proclaiming: Africans and Dogs Are Not Allowed. Actually, some Africans were allowed: the cleaners and gardeners and cooks and guards and those who ensured the wazungu patrons were comfortable. But dogs were strictly prohibited, for reasons few could remember, and which many found confounding given the centrality of dogs in wazungu’s lives. They were always talking or cuddling or walking with one. In another part of the colony, one mzungu had gunned down an African for stoning his dog when it attacked him.

So in June of that year, 1963, with the onset of independence, when word went out that all races were welcome in the previously whites-only Jakaranda Hotel, most Africans suspected dogs would be allowed in as well, and so carried stones as a precautionary measure.

When they did not find any dogs at the hotel, the revelers exchanged stones for eggs, because given their restive past with the wazungu, they thought it foolish to meet them empty-handed, especially when unhatched flamingo eggs ringed the lake that gave the township its name. The use of eggs, the locals further conceded, would confirm to the whites that they bore no hard feelings. So, an outing for drinks nearly always concluded with quite a few rotten eggs cracking on white faces.

Rajan stopped abruptly, torn between proceeding to the bathroom and groping his way to the safety of backstage. A moment or two passed before some illumination glowed in the distance. A candle beckoned in the walkway, stretching a tongue that licked the walls at every swoosh of the wind. Rajan made a fresh attempt for the washroom, making short, hesitant strides because he still couldn’t see properly and the pressure on his bladder had slowed his walk. He had only shuffled a few steps when he felt, rather than saw, someone approach. He judged her to be a woman—her silhouette was framed by the faint candlelight, with tongs of hair looping a halo over her head. As she neared, he picked up her sweet, spicy scent; it descended on him like the sweep of an ocean wave.

Rajan turned to the right to dodge her but her hip was there already; when he turned to the left, the other hip was there too, curved like a strung bow. Without uttering a word, the stranger planted one of the softest kisses he had ever received and then drifted into the darkness. Rajan stood, momentarily transfixed, the tap-tap of the stranger’s heels reverberating like bathwater trapped in the ear. There was a clicking sound above him before a burst of light flooded the hallway, synchronized with appreciative shouts from the revelers assembled at the Jakaranda.

Rajan licked his lips—there was the gentlest hint of lavender. He found her scent fascinating. Some of the African girls he had kissed dabbed their mouths with Bint el Sudan balm, whose sharp, sweet taste turned their lips into sets of ripe guavas. But those were the chosen few, the urbanites who had outgrown their rural roots to acquire city tastes. Most village girls smeared their faces and lips with the milking jelly, because until very recently, man and beast had lived in the same quarters, virtually sharing food and drink.

The Indian girls were not any better, though their use of Vaseline on their lips was a bit ahead of the times. Rajan had not kissed a white girl, so had no idea how they tasted, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. He simply had not come into kissing distance of any white girl, since everything in his life had been organized according to his color. He was a brown man in a black world which had been placed under white rule all his life. But now that uhuru was in the offing and barriers that had divided the races for generations were beginning to crumble, maybe this was his chance. People were testing the limits, exploring new horizons.

The lavender lips were outside his experience. The idea that he could have kissed a white woman in the dark brought Rajan to a screeching halt, and his bladder released a drop or two in his pants. He momentarily feared he had dripped something else, and he unsuccessfully tried to steer his thoughts in a different direction.

Rajan couldn’t quite remember if the stranger’s lips touched his lower or upper lip, or even whether he had opened his mouth properly to receive the kiss. Yet the taste in his mouth seemed everlasting. The burning sensation in his bladder subsided, and was replaced with a tingling of excitement. Although Rajan was only a few paces from the washroom, and could detect the acrid smell of the toilets in the air, he decided to scour the hotel and look for the kissing stranger.

Outside on the hotel grounds, Rajan slowed down when he reached an intersection. Wooden planks with sharpened edges formed a compass pointing to the different directions of the establishment. Black marks now blotted out the scrawl that had earlier announced, Whites Only. Rajan licked his lips again. The mysterious taste was still on his tongue, seemingly stronger than the last time he had checked.

He took the path that led to the clubhouse, or the farmhouse, as it was still known to McDonald and a generation of men who now spoke in croaky drawls from years of dust clogging their throats. Those men, skin birdlike with age, still came to the club and trembled as they pointed to where the farm once existed, unable to mouth the name because of the emotion it evoked. They remembered the peaceful days when their hands were steady enough to balance minuscule measuring cups to get the right dosage of medicine for a sneezing cow at night. Now such doses were being administered to humans.

Rajan cautiously stepped into the clubhouse and glanced over at a group of men sitting at the counter. Those men, once white, now looked pink, like pigs. They sat solidly in their seats, their thick necks holding heads that were once proud and erect, but were now drooping, defeated, hairy hands clasping tall glasses with frosted rims. There wasn’t a single woman in sight and the four men seemed downcast. The only things that appeared alive were the three rhino and two buffalo heads hoisted above the main bar counter; glassy eyes stared vacantly, as though frightened by the bleakness of their future.

Rajan hurried out and took the path leading to the annex, which through colonial times had been reserved for Indians—yet even then, only a few token Indians were allowed in. The annex was almost empty now but for three men and two women. One of the women sat on the lap of a heavyset man, nibbling at the edges of his earlobe poking from under his turban. Rajan looked intently at the canoodling woman and instantly concluded she wasn’t capable of kissing with the tenderness he had experienced in the dark. The other woman was drinking from a green bottle, lips crimson red. She turned when she noticed Rajan, pushing aside a strand of hair that had strayed to her eye with an air of sophistication.

“Beautiful bhai, you vant to breast-feed?” she giggled, touching her generous, heaving bosom with her two hands. “The milk is burning me up.”

If the woman had the capacity to turn fermented barley and hops into fresh milk, and was still able to accurately note Rajan’s good looks, then she must have been more sober than Rajan assumed. He had a handsome face with penetrating eyes framed by dark lashes, which further amplified an aquiline nose that seemed perfectly chiseled.

Rajan fled and took the path to the watering hole. This was simply a tarpaulin stretched across a frame of wrought iron that formed an outdoor sitting space. It was pretty new, created to accommodate Africans when the nation’s political developments pointed to the inevitability of uhuru. Since Africans would ultimately be invited to the main table, the hotel management had decided it would be useful to allow them a forum where they could acquire some table manners.

But there was scant evidence that the management’s ideals had borne fruit. The white plastic tables sagged under a forest of green and brown beer bottles—proof that Africans had yet to refine their manners and order one drink at a time. Although only a few token Africans were initially allowed on the premises, and most were generally wealthy enough to afford some trappings of comfort, they still found the display of plentiful alcohol irresistible.

When the Jakaranda opened its doors to Africans in June of 1963, some folks simply arrived barefoot or on bicycle and said they had come to see the property. Some saw with their teeth, unable to hide their surprise at catching glimpses of whites and Indians at such close quarters. Since most had no money to spend, they converged around a black-and-white TV set that had been installed in one corner and spent the evening watching the news. Undoubtedly nature, as well as man, produced interesting news on a regular basis. The Longonot crater was reported to have erupted the previous night, spewing molten lava that left a serpentine trail in its wake. But what most African revelers enjoyed hearing was the booming voice of their new leader, whose mystique had been considerable even before he took office. He was simply Big Man and all his lieutenants needed to do to get things done was invoke his name, or insinuate they were following his command. In such instances, they said they were “acting on orders from above.” So Big Man, who presumably lived above, inspired awe and dread.

The watering hole, so named due to its proximity to the wild animals’ drinking point, became a favorite spot for tourists, as well as locals across the racial divide. But since all the races had never before interacted socially, their initial meeting resembled nervous animals coming in contact for the first time; if animals started by nosing their opponents’ horns, humans began by sizing each other up from a distance, commenting on news events, then finally warming up and sitting at the same table to share a drink.

Rajan scanned the female faces and settled on several sets of lips turned in his direction. They were mostly Indian and African lips, thickened with layers of Bint el Sudan and Vaseline. There were no white women present. Rajan’s hopes were waning. He licked his lips again, shaking his head to fend off the gnawing thought: why would a single touch from a woman cast such a strong spell on him? The mysterious taste seemed to be dissipating now, which only heightened his despair.

He stepped out and walked aimlessly, before taking the path leading to the butchery, hoping the kissing stranger had somehow ended up there. The butchery was the spot where his grandfather Babu sat during his maiden trip to the establishment, a visit that was made after weeks of coaxing. Babu had simply said, without any elaboration, that it didn’t feel right for him to venture into the Jakaranda for ancient historical reasons. When Rajan persisted in his demands for an explanation, Babu said: “A foolish child suckles the breast of its dead mother because he can’t differentiate between sleep and death.”

Rajan often wondered if the ancient history Babu had in mind related to McDonald, the elderly owner of the ranch that became the Jakaranda, and who still lived in a house on the sprawling property. McDonald occasionally dropped by to watch Rajan and his band rehearse. On such occasions, the old man would stand, nodding his head to the beat, before retreating as silently as he had arrived, the shuffle of his feet interspersed with the gentle knock of his walking stick. Rajan noticed McDonald had started paying more attention to him since learning Babu was his grandfather. “Greet the old cow for me,” McDonald would say to Rajan as he trod away.

Rajan never conveyed the message because Babu grew tense every time he mentioned McDonald or the Jakaranda, though he still managed to convince his grandfather to shake off that ancient history and show up there to watch him perform.

The butchery was located in a building that had once served as the servants’ quarters of McDonald’s house. One wall had been removed to provide a view of the animal carcasses that hung upside down. This area offered a panoramic vista of the plains as well. The electric fence still stood between the establishment and the wilds. The animals still came to the watering hole but the mating had died down. Tourists’ cameras had replaced guns on the shooting range. Most people suspected the animals found the flashing cameras intrusive, or perhaps the animals could tell camera flashes did not threaten their survival like the booming guns, and so did not feel the pressure to procreate. But few thought the animals could have been corrupted by the humans, whom they had watched doing their thing for many years. The animals had acquired the human habit of experiencing thrill only when under immense pressure.

Rajan considered the contrasting appearances of the cooking meat, the raw meat, and the animals roaming the wilds. One was at liberty to choose the animal he wanted killed for dinner. The majority of the meat was from goats, sheep—lamb and mutton—chicken, and turkey, all having replaced the dairy cows. The meat was grilled, broiled, fried, roasted, or made by the tumbukiza method, which involved throwing the meat, vegetables, and spices into one big soup pot to cook together. A charcoal brazier, the size of a man, sat outside the butchery—its wobbly, spindly legs holding amazing amounts of meat, the multiple apertures breathing laboriously, as if bogged down by the demand of giving fresh life to coal from dead acacia stems and shrubs and fossilized bones. Eventually, after spasms of seething, sighing, and hard breathing, the brazier would spark gently to life, turning the layers of black coal to dawn brown, before glowing evening red. The brazier was the glue that held white, pink, black, and brown hands together, pointing at the pieces of meat they claimed as their own.

It was a site of unbridled desire as men and women salivated over the cooking meat, while others watched the animals and developed their own appetites. All were there to eat their fill, and the task of feeding them fell on Gathenji the butcher, with his reassuring leitmotif, “Ngoja kidogo!” which meant one needed resolute patience when dealing with him, for his “wait a minute” often lasted a few hours, usually because Gathenji sold meat faster than he could roast it, and some hungry patrons were more than willing to induce his cooperation with a little extra money.

Rajan surveyed the butchery, reminded once again of his grandfather. When Babu had visited for the first time, he observed even with the promise of independence that men were still hunters and gatherers; women waited at the table to be fed. True to Babu’s word, there was not one woman at the butchery.

Babu and Gathenji had instantly hit it off. It was one of those quiet nights when the month was in a bad corner, which meant somewhere around the third week, when people had exhausted their midmonth advances and the next paycheck felt years away. Babu, slouched and supporting his frame on a walking stick, had barely settled in his seat when Gathenji marched over to the table and bowed in unctuous deference. “This is the man himself!” the butcher had saluted Babu, placing a wooden tray bearing a piece of meat on the table. “This is kionjo, just a small bite to silence the pangs of hunger,” he said generously, slicing the tangled meat open, the juicy parts yielding drops of oil as he proceeded to cut it into tiny pieces. “You know, we have heard so much about you, mzee . . .”

“I hope you have heard the right things,” Babu had replied, glowing as he turned to his grandson Rajan. “He keeps asking me to tell him stories from the past. But I don’t know how he retells them.”

“He does it very well,” Gathenji assured, then went on: “You know, now that we are about to celebrate our independence, you stand tall as one of our fathers of the nation.”

“Not so loud,” Babu cautioned. “Some don’t think of fatherhood as a shared responsibility.”

“Never mind, you are our father. Tell me, where did you learn all those languages? Swahili, Kikuyu, Dholuo, Kalenjin?” Gathenji pressed.

“Well, it was all in a day’s work,” Babu allowed. “I worked with men from different communities, so I learned their languages.”

“And you know the most difficult part of it, my good mzee?” Gathenji said. “You built the rail with those hands of yours . . . the rail that now links the land of Waswahili to that of Wajaluo, Wakikuyu to Wakalenjin.”

“It was all in a day’s job.”

Gathenji waved him down. “Hold it right there, ngoja kidogo.” He had noticed Babu was not eating and still had his false teeth in. Gathenji dashed to the butchery and returned shortly with a mug of muteta soup and a glass of water into which Babu dropped his dentures, sipping the soup as he did so. They managed this exchange without a word.

“I hear this very house has an interesting tale to tell,” Gathenji said conspiratorially.

“Careful,” Babu smiled, flashing his bare gums, “walls have ears.”

“I agree,” Gathenji said. “Let’s not gossip about the stream while sitting on its rocks.”

“Words of wisdom.”

Gathenji was summoned back to the butchery by a customer. Babu took another sip of the soup and sighed. It was spicy, just as he liked it. He took a bite of mutura and chewed nervously, wondering if the meat was halal. Although he wasn’t very religious, he liked to eat right. The mutura was delicious, if a little oversalted.

Soon, Rajan took to the stage, calling the audience’s attention to the special guest in the house. Babu waved his walking stick from his seat as the revelers ululated.

* * *

Bringing his thoughts back to the present and to the mysterious kissing stranger, Rajan paused by the brazier and warmed his hands absentmindedly. With the return of the lights, the brazier had lost some of its brilliance, but the intensity of the heat had not diminished. The meat was spread on a mesh above the hot coal. A rising blue flame was snuffed by a trickle of blood. A blob of fat followed the route the blood had taken but got caught between two glowing coals. After some moments, the white blob congealed into a black knot, its fatty juice trickling down with a sparkle. The flesh sizzled, its red-pink color turning golden brown. There was a popping sound as a kidney puffed and burst, spewing a splash of fat that ignited a fresh flame that sprinted across the brazier, like a shooting star on a dark night, before it went down in a flicker.

Rajan felt a light wind sweep through. He lifted his eyes and peered at the animals by the watering hole. They, too, had lifted their ears, listening for threats to their lives. The carcasses of the animals that had been killed for the day’s meat nudged back to life, doing their upside-down dance at the butchery, attracting a fresh lease of interest from revelers. The sizzling of the meat and the heaving of the coals melded into the din of the night: the popping of a frosty, turbaned bottle losing its top, the clink of toasting glasses, the loosening of belts, the murmur of drunken men and women seducing one another.

Music came to the fore as someone bellowed: “Next onstage, the Indian Raj, the undisputed king of mugithi . . . Next onstage . . .”

Although Rajan was scarcely aware of this, he had gone almost full circle. He had combed the entire establishment in his search of the kissing stranger, to no avail. He had almost reached the washrooms again. The sound of the riff and the cheer from the crowd nearly brought him to his knees. There was something utterly overpowering about the music and the energized audience’s response. Somebody called out his name, and the riff sounded once more as the drums throbbed and the guitar wailed.

He was suddenly aware of the pressure on his bladder, which felt like the prick of a thousand needles, drilling a mild, burning sensation. There was even something pleasant about the pain. He shuffled to the urinal and listened to the rhythmic drone as the jet of urine drummed the white bowl, a haze of steam rising lazily in the air.

He felt happy and light as he sprinted backstage without washing his hands, feeling safe in the dim light, now insulated further by the taste of the stranger’s kiss.

He walked up to the microphone onstage and adjusted it to his height. He was small-bodied, like a stunted teen, with a clutch of jet-black hair held at the back by a red, gold, and green hairband. When fans saw him for the first time, they often remarked that fame does not match its owner, for his frame came up short of his towering reputation.

The instruments were building in tempo. Rajan trembled with delight and nodded appreciatively to the instrumentalists, tapping his right foot, responding to a rhythm that appeared to bubble deep inside him.

In his formative years as a singer, Rajan would shake with fright before the curtains opened, unsure how the audience might respond. Sometimes, lines that he had rehearsed for weeks would evaporate at the sight of hundreds of eyes. Now he was a lot more composed, but the dread before performing a show never really left him. It helped when he was under the influence of something. Steam is what they called preconcert intoxication; he’d had a few beers to “unlock” his mind.

Rajan let the instruments play on—the squeak from the keyboard, the wail of the guitar, and the throb of the drums building into a frenzy. He yanked the microphone from its stand and walked to the edge of the platform as dozens of hands rushed to touch him. He crooned in a low, mournful voice:

Barua nakutumia

Nikufunze ya dunia

Usije ukaangamia

Ewe wangu—eeeeeeeeeee!

He shut his eyes and let the music smother his face, now contorted into a mask of pain and pleasure. The air was tense as revelers fell silent. All the sounds from the orchestra were suffused in his small frame, his voice releasing the energy in dribs and drabs. The fans were hypnotized. When he sang the chorus again, the audience joined in, turning the song into a call-and-response, uniting those seated in different sections that once separated the races, building gently before cascading into the main riff.

Rajan fished a pretty girl from the mass of hands that waved excitedly at him. He always picked the most striking girls for this dance, which was a precursor to the gentler dance that followed backstage. The girl wore high heels and ascended the creaky stairs as though she were stepping on eggs. Her skirt was too tight to allow a full stride, which elicited more ululation from the audience. Rajan’s heart somersaulted at the flash of her exposed leg. He stretched his arm and held her dainty hand and pulled her onstage.

The music transitioned smoothly to a faster beat. Rajan turned his back on the pretty girl. She obviously knew the drill; she hoisted her hands on his shoulders. Other fans jumped onstage and lifted their hands onto those ahead of them, and soon the dancing troop had formed a convoy. This was mugithi, the train dance, bringing onstage the stories that Rajan’s grandfather Babu had narrated about his life building the railway.

That night, even as he danced mugithi and led the brigade of old and young alike trooping through the Jakaranda’s uneven and crammed dance floor to imitate the movement of the train, hands on shoulders and thick waists, feet falling with the perfect synchronicity of a centipede tread, his eyes were downcast, looking for the high heels that could only belong to the kissing stranger.

He had kissed many women. Since rising to prominence in Nakuru—the measure of his celebrity being his regular features in the Nakuru Times—female attention had never been in short supply. In fact, so many were on offer that he and Era, his childhood friend and bandmate, had developed codes to distinguish the women: News in Brief was the tag attached to the skimpily dressed; Long-Term Investment was reserved for the big-bodied; Coming Soon referred to the striking young girls about to blossom into womanhood; Takeout meant petite girls who could simply be packed away like a bag of chips.

Many other women, in shapes and sizes that defied codification, would steal backstage and commend Rajan for his singing. He would politely acknowledge their compliments, even when he was inclined to tear away and hide—from the drunks shouting because they were hard of hearing, from older women clinging to vestiges of youth. Or pretty girls with stinking mouths. In the spirit of uhuru, such yardsticks were waived and those wishing to test the limits of their newfound freedom were encouraged to proceed backstage.

It was hardly a backstage, just a tiny enclave where the musical equipment was loaded after every performance, sharing a wall with the butchery. Humans would pile on top of the stacked equipment and try to make a different kind of music, the neon lights flickering outside, the clouds of smoke from the butchery providing enhanced stage effects.

A week before the kissing stranger arrived on the scene, a horsehaired woman had wandered backstage and brayed her affection for Rajan. She tripped over the equipment, while still clinging to her glass of beer. Sprawled on the ground, Rajan had motioned for her to join him, but she was too drunk to lift a leg. Rajan walked over and touched her hair. Her horsehair wig fell off to reveal silly cornrows. He offered a hand and her plastic nails fell off. The false eyelashes dropped off when she cocked her head to look squarely at him. The woman removed her dentures and threw them into her beer glass. When she unhooked her bra, its stiff cups collapsed to reveal shriveled breasts. Rajan had fled and sought Era’s intervention. Era took one look at the woman and said: “Ugly cows belong in the butchery!” And with that, the woman, animal naked, was rolled over to the butchery where Gathenji received her with philosophical gratitude: Ciakorire Wacu mugunda. That might sound like an attempt to redistribute resources, but in those days, the young men called it growing up. They sat and laughed and toasted their green-turbaned bottles the following day, then drank and laughed some more as they narrated the events of the night. They played music and more besotted fans crawled backstage for a repeat performance.

It was remarkable how few words were exchanged backstage, which some band members also called kichinjio or the slaughterhouse. Perhaps Era and his band saw no need for further communication; like animals, they used spoor to pick their prey. But not everyone was willing to play the game. Only weeks earlier, a girl called Angie had flatly declined to cooperate with Rajan, even though she went backstage and undressed. “What do I mean to you?” she had demanded in a calm voice.

Rajan had propped himself on his right elbow and looked intently at the girl. Even in the faint light, he could tell she was strikingly beautiful. Her naked breasts, like filled jugs, stood erect, the wide hips seemingly out of sync with her slight frame. Her calm and beautiful presence appeared misplaced amid the riotous din from the butchery, the chorus of drunks ordering fresh rounds, the whimper of music equipment under the weight of two adults.

Rajan had kept quiet.

“Soooo, did you hear my question?” Angie had repeated without any hint of annoyance. Rajan could feel his indignation rising, like heartburn after a good meal. What did the girl expect him to say? And why did she impose her expectation that she should mean anything to him?

Angie had gotten dressed and stood to leave. “If you want to see me, I will be at Moonshine tomorrow at four p.m.,” she announced. “They serve nicely brewed tea.” Moonshine was another previously whites-only establishment, and young African women were quickly catching up with white culture, like having four o’clock tea. If this was the new African woman, Rajan shuddered, he and his ilk were in trouble. The era of free things was about to end.

Rajan had grudgingly honored the appointment the following day but arrived half an hour late.

“There is no hurry in Africa!” Angie said cheerfully. “You must know you are worth waiting for.” She was sitting by the pool, next to a whitewashed wall. An inverted image of Angie was submerged in the water, an image that threw Rajan’s mind to his grandfather Babu’s story of his treacherous journey by boat from India to Mombasa many years before.

Rajan had approached the girl. She looked remarkably different from his night visions. He remembered her spiky hair falling all over her face. Now it was pushed back and pinned, accentuating her forehead that shone against the sun. The high cheekbones were still sharp, perhaps sharper than an artist’s chisel, and her calm face, almost childlike, contradicted the mature, worldly mask Rajan had seen at night.

Accustomed to the dark and the comfort afforded by multicolored lights, Rajan had blinked like an animal out of his lair. He realized for the first time how rare it was for him to face the daylight. He typically slept through the day and sang at night. He found the sun blinding. He did not know what to say, for he never had to say anything to women. They all arrived at his feet seduced by his music, and hurled their bodies at him without a word. The best effort he ever made was to stretch out a hand and pick his chosen few from the sea of besotted fans. His microphone was the magic wand that drew them to him; without it, he was powerless.

Angie held his hand and squeezed it, her eyes dark with power and mystery. He cringed and thought of the image in the pool, envisioning their gazes mirrored in the water. He felt like he was drowning in the pool of her eyes and his hand went limp in hers. Unable to keep his grip, he lowered his gaze and pulled his hand away, then excused himself to go to the bathroom, although he felt no urgency at all. He used the back door and made his exit. He had not uttered a single word.

Quite often, Rajan woke up in beds where he could hardly recall how he’d gotten there in the first place, but where he did not need to utter a single word to get things going. Quite a few times, it was with a hint of regret, dodging kisses from stale mouths or breaking free before his captors could grant his leave, extricating himself from a mess he did not wish to get tangled in. In such circumstances, older women were usually the culprit. He dreaded their insistence on small talk that could only end in hurt—he was there to have a good time, not chat about life. Worse still, some sought his thoughts on their immediate future under a black ruler. But the one thing that he enjoyed was bedding different generations of women and assessing their values and attitudes toward life and love. He had discovered that all women, whether young or old, sought an affirmation of love—or at least some declaration that they meant something to him. The truth was, they did not, and he suspected that they knew as much, yet couldn’t quite leave him alone.

Then the kissing stranger arrived and disrupted everything. Just like that. For the lavender-flavored kiss on that balmy June night in 1963 breathed into Rajan a restlessness that infected his mind, and later his heart.

There were the awkward moments when he’d stop in his tracks, convinced a girl he passed on the street was the kissing stranger, only for her physique to transform into an image different from the one in his mind. At other times, he would walk into the washrooms at the Jakaranda to retrace her steps; he made so many trips there that his band members started speculating that he was suffering from a serious case of diarrhea.

In moments of despair, he stood on street corners scanning the women passing by before marshaling up the courage to confront one with a ready line, only to falter upon closer scrutiny. He thought the kissing stranger had dimpled cheeks, with a gentle smile playing on her full lips as she seductively swished away. But in other visions she would appear chubby and unsmiling. Occasionally, he found he had assigned her features from different women from his past until he got all mixed up. Then he would remember he’d never actually seen her face because it had been so dark.

One morning, Rajan went from door to door inquiring about young women who wore high heels. He pretended he was a fashion photographer looking for models to parody the flamingo dance, which was all the rage at the time. But no one ever remembered seeing anyone in high heels, the question only serving to remind many that they did not wear any shoes at all. The irrationality of his inquiry was amplified by a middle-aged woman who remarked: “Could anyone go tilling the land or carrying a load of firewood on her head in the kind of shoes you are describing?” The woman clasped her cracked hands to display her dismay and squeaked, “Yu kiini!”

He did not gain access to any white homes because no one answered the doorbell and he was afraid of venturing in unannounced, since most homes had signs warning of mbwa kali, or ferocious dogs. The search bearing no fruit, Rajan broached the idea of placing an advertisement in the Lonely Hearts column of the Nakuru Times. But who was he looking for? Was she tall or short, slight or heavy? How many Nakuru women would fit that bill? Was she white, black, or brown? He froze at that question. Who among the three groups could have kissed with such sophistication? Probably a white girl, but then Africans, Indians, and Arabs were racing to make up for lost time, and could probably give whites a run for their money after only a couple of months of freedom.

Had he known the ethnicity of the kissing stranger, would that have narrowed his search and yielded better results? He reckoned that would actually be problematic, for how could he describe the subject of his admiration without arousing his prejudices about her imagined history? After all, humans do not wear identities on their faces. Where would he place her in a land where dozens of communities existed? And how could he describe himself anyway? A Kenyan of Indian ancestry seeks a lean, pretty woman who can wear high heels in the dark . . . ?

And would it be accurate to describe himself as Indian when his only encounter with the subcontinent was through the stories he had heard from his grandparents? He realized to his horror the perils of history and the presumptions that come with symbols. A turban may be the mark of a Sikh, but the Akorino of Molo and Elburgon wore them too. In that place, anybody could be anything. And when things appeared set and certain, nature erupted to remind him of the temporal nature of man. A dormant volcano leaped to color the land ashen gray. A landslide tossed a mass of red earth to bury houses in the bowels of the earth, erasing the markers that people had used to define their existence.

Eventually exhausted by his fruitless search, Rajan returned to his routine at the Jakaranda of drinking and eating and performing.

The Jakaranda wasn’t just home to Rajan’s personal melodrama; the atmosphere of the hotel was also spiced up by the butcher Gathenji’s own spectacle—his tools of trade a sharp cleaver, acerbic wit, and swift feet, which were unfailingly thrust in ill-fitting flip-flops, the big toes nosing the ground for any trouble. Picture the man in what was once a white dust coat faded brown with oil and dirt, a fleshy face grinning at an impatient customer, one hand caressing the carcass, the other gently tearing the strips of flesh as though it hurt the animal to cut it up.

“Choma, chemsha, au tumbukiza?” Gathenji would ask, pausing to look at the customer. “My friend,” he would continue, “let me tell you, undo kwo undo. If you want this for a roast then you need a little fat. Just a little fat to help it sizzle,” he would explain, the knife slicing through a hump the color of bad milk. He would meticulously gather the meat and the chops of hump and drop them on the scale with the violence of Moses crashing the clay tablets on Mount Sinai. The scale would perform a jerky dance before the meter rested on the exact weight requested. Gathenji would tap the metal lid to ensure the weights were right, then flash a toothy grin at the waiting customer. “Sawa sawa?” he would ask, piercing a metal rod through the pieces of meat, rolling them into a parcel before throwing it over his shoulder so that the bundle landed on the kitchen table with a soft thud. “Hiyo ni choma!” he would then shout, indicating that the meat was for roasting.

“How do you manage such accuracy?” a puzzled customer would pose, while handing Gathenji the money.

“My friend, let me tell you. Undo kwo undo. One by one. I’m the meat master,” Gathenji would reply with a hint of pride as he retrieved the change—the hundred-shilling notes in the right breast pocket, fifties in the left, the mashilingi in the left side of his trousers, the twenties in the right. All other big notes were stashed deep inside Gathenji’s layers of clothes, in a pocket sewn in his coat that he called kabangue, which meant he would rather die than part with its contents.

As the meat roasted, Gathenji would march around to different customers, complete with his chef’s hat, like an admiral inspecting a guard of honor, and gently place a chopping board bearing sizzling meat on the table to placate some enraged customer who had been waiting for hours.

“This is kionjo. Just to whet the appetite as the meat cooks,” he would say. Hungry patrons would grab the pieces faster than they were cut, and praise the butcher for a great job. And wait.

But when the meat they’d ordered was done, bewildered revelers would form a line at the butchery demanding their pound of flesh, for Gathenji seldom sold them the requested weights. Since the area was generally poorly lit, and drunks often dimmed their eyes as alcohol took effect, none of them ever noticed the thin, colorless string attached to the scales. No one ever wondered why Gathenji always wore flip-flops, which allowed easy pull of the string using his toes. Those who had been shortchanged threatened not just to go after Gathenji’s kabangue but his throat as well. More often than not, the disputes tended to boil over and spill onto the music stage, ending in a fragile truce that would hold until Gathenji delivered the entrails, the only conciliatory dish available, but itself a subject of constant conflict.

“This offal is not equivalent to the meat you stole from us,” someone charged one evening.

“Who said I stole meat from anyone?” Gathenji demanded, meat cleaver in hand, the naked lightbulb dancing above his head. There was a tense silence. Someone coughed nervously. Gathenji relaxed and dropped the cleaver and walked clumsily toward the complaining party, his large belly protruding, the flaps of his dust coat swishing like a duck’s tail.

“One of these days, we are going to roast that belly of yours,” someone declared, eliciting laughter.

“It would roast well in its own fat,” another remarked.

“My friend, let me tell you. Undo kwo undo. The Bible says one eats where one works. I eat from the sweat of my brow. We have a saying that when someone is full, he should cover his stomach. But if there is a hungry man, that I shall feed.”

“So what happened to our meat?” the voice that had accused Gathenji of theft insisted.

“My friend, let me tell you. Undo kwo undo,” Gathenji returned confidently. “Did you not hear of the fool who quarreled with the fire for consuming his meat? Or do you think fire eats vines and mikengeria?”

“Wee, barman, give Gathenji a Tusker,” someone shouted. “Give him a drink. He has spoken like ten elders!”

And so, this type of dispute over meat and offal would be resolved with glasses of beer followed by: “Waiter, give us another round. And don’t let Gathenji thirst. Hey, Gathenji, give us another kilo and a half. And don’t let too much heat eat away the juicy parts. Give it some bones too!”

From his counter, Gathenji would shout: “Hey! Let the Indian Raj play us some music to seal the deal!” Era and Rajan and the rest of the band would have no choice but to oblige.

Such distractions kept Rajan’s mind off the kissing stranger, and his angst subsided; he quietly wondered if it was the revelers’ ability to endure that allowed them to bear his musical privations. But he still felt, without being able to explain it, that the kissing stranger knew him. That’s why she had kissed him in that dark corridor. And even after he’d given up searching, he could not forget her.

Then one day she returned. Just like that. Rajan was onstage at the Jakaranda, stretching out a hand to fish a pretty girl from the audience, when he detected the unmistakable sweet, spicy perfume. Like a bee drawn to a flowering plant, he leaped offstage and strode over to the table where he believed the scent was wafting from. He found himself standing within a foot of a stunning young woman. Even in the waning light, she was quite a presence. She sat ramrod straight, with long, lush black hair that reached her waist. When she rose to greet Rajan, he saw how her tiny waist supported massive hips, or as Gathenji the butcher liked to say, she carried her hips and her neighbors’. And when she moved, no matter how gently, her erect breasts shook lightly; her skin appeared to change from brown to white and back, as the oscillating lights did their dance around her.