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Minutes of Glory 3
cars and the uniforms of their chauffeurs. She dreamt of lovers
who would come for her in sleek Mercedes sports cars made
for two. She saw herself linking hands with such a lover,
walking in the streets of Nairobi and Mombasa, tapping the
ground with high heels, quick, quick short steps. And sudden-
ly she would stop in front of a display glass window, exclaiming at the same time, Oh darling, won't you buy me those... ?
Those what? he would ask, affecting anger. Those stockings,
darling. It was as an owner of several stockings, ladderless and
holeless, that she thought of her well-being. Never again
would she mend torn things. Never, never, never. Do you
understand? Never. She was next the proud owner of different
coloured wigs, blonde wigs, brunette wigs, redhead wigs,
Afro wigs, wigs, wigs, all the wigs in the world. Only then
would the whole earth sing hallelujah to the one Beatrice. At
such moments, she would feel exalted, lifted out of her murky
self, no longer a floor sweeper and bedmaker for a five-minute
instant love, but Beatrice, descendant of Wangu Makeri who
made men tremble with desire at her naked body bathed in
moonlight, daughter of Nyang'endo, the founder of modern
Ilmorog, of whom they often sang that she had worked several
lovers into impotence.
Then she noticed him and he was the opposite of the lover
of her dreams. He came one Saturday afternoon driving a big
five-ton lorry. He carefully parked it beside the Benzes,
the Jaguars and the Daimlers, not as a lorry, but as one of
those sleek cream-bodied frames, so proud of it he seemed to
be. He dressed in a baggy grey suit over which he wore a
heavy khaki military overcoat. He removed the overcoat,
folded it with care, and put it in the front seat. He locked
all the doors, dusted himself a little, then walked round
the lorry as if inspecting it for damage. A few steps before
he entered Treetop, he turned round for a final glance at
his lorry dwarfing the other things. At Treetops he sat in a corner and, with a
rather loud defiant voice, ordered a Kenya one. He drank it
with relish, looking around at the same time for a face he might
recognize. He indeed did recognize one of the big ones and he
immediately ordered for him a quarter bottle of Vat 69. This
was accepted with a bare nod of the head and a patronising
smile; but when he tried to follow his generosity with a conversation, he was firmly ignored. He froze, sank into his
Muratina. But only for a time. He tried again: he was met with
frowning faces. More pathetic were his attempts to join in
jokes; he would laugh rather too loudly, which would make
the big ones stop, leaving him in the air alone. Later in- the
evening he stood up, counted several crisp hundred shilling
notes and handed them to Nyaguthii behind the counter
ostensibly for safekeeping. People whispered; murmured; a
few laughed, rather derisively, though they were rather impressed. But this act
did not win him immediate recognition. He staggered towards
room no. 7 which he had hired. Beatrice brought him the
keys. He glanced at her, briefly, then lost all interest.
Thereafter he came every Saturday. At five when most of
the big shots were already seated. He repeated the same
ritual, except the money act, and always met with defeat. He
nearly always sat in the same corner and always rented room
7. Beatrice grew to anticipate his visits and, without being
conscious of it, kept the room ready for him. Often after he had
been badly humiliated by the big company, he would detain
Beatrice and talk to her, or rather he talked to himself in her
presence. For him, it had been a life of struggles. He had never
been to school although getting an education had been his
ambition. He never had a chance. His father was a squatter in
the European settled area in the Rift Valley. That meant a lot in
those colonial days. It meant among other things a man and
his children were doomed to a future of sweat and toil for the
white devils and their children. He had joined the freedom
struggle and like the others had been sent to detention. He
came from detention the same as his mother had brought him
to this world. Nothing. With independence he found he did
not possess the kind of education which would have placed
him in one of the vacancies at the top. He started as a charcoal
burner, then a butcher, gradually working his own way to
become a big transporter of vegetables and potatoes from the
Rift Valley and Chin districts to Nairobi. He was proud of his
achievement. But he resented that others, who had climbed to
their present wealth through loans and a subsidized education, would not recognize his like. He would rumble on like
this, dwelling on education he would never have, and talking of better chances for his children. Then he would carefully
count the money, put it under the pillow, and then dismiss
Beatrice. Occasionally he would buy her a beer but he was
clearly suspicious of women whom he saw as money-eaters of
men. He had not yet married.
One night he slept with her. In the morning he scratched for
a twenty shilling note and gave it to her. She accepted the
money with an odd feeling of guilt. He did this for several
weeks. She did not mind the money. It was useful. But he paid
for her body as he would pay for a bag of potatoes or a sack of
cabbages. With the one pound, he had paid for her services as
a listener, a vessel of his complaints against those above, and
as a one-night receptacle of his man's burden. She was becoming bored with his
ego, with his stories that never varied in content, but
somehow, in him, deep inside, she felt that something had
been there, a fire, a seed, a flower which was being
smothered. In him she saw a fellow victim and looked forward
to his visits. She too longed to talk to someone. She too
longed to confide in a human being who would understand.
And she did it one Saturday night, suddenly interrupting
the story of his difficult climb to the top. She did not
know why she did it. Maybe it was the rain outside. It was
softly drumming the corrugated iron sheets, bringing with the drumming
a warm and drowsy indifference. He would listen. He had to
listen. She came from Karatina in Nyeri. Her two brothers had
been gunned down by the British soldiers. Another one had
died in detention. She was, so to speak, an only child. Her
parents were poor. But they worked hard on their bare strip of
land and managed to pay her fees in primary school. For the
first six years she had worked hard. In the seventh year, she
must have relaxed a little. She did not pass with a good grade.
Of course she knew many with similar grades who had been
called to good government secondary schools. She knew a few
others with lesser grades who had gone to very top schools on
the strength of their connections. But she was not called to any
high school with reasonable fees. Her parents could not afford
fees in a Harambee school. And she would not hear of repeating standard seven. She stayed at home with her parents.
Occasionally she would help them in the shamba and with
To be continued |
