THREE

The new year, the great year of Independence, dragged on. Martin shortened his leave at home because there was a lot of work and he could use the extra money gained for the forfeited days. He gaped at the great ceremonies of June, the reversal of the order of his schooldays, the known world turned on its head. He even took Fauzia out to see the fireworks and the decorations and that was how people from home got to know about her and sent word back. Because of this, he supposed, Paulina did not come in August and sent no word, but she sent no questions or recriminations either. Nor did his mother send to ask why she was getting no money from him and no greetings. As the year wore on he began to ponder things that Fauzia’s aunt had said, as though people themselves could control the gift of children or women be unwilling for it, and Wonder how the girl who seemed so young and guileless had yet learned the lessons of her girlhood so well. He began to examine the dresses, the wrappers, the bangles, when she was out at one of her Moslem festivals and to wonder who paid for them and how much.

And so he told her that when he took another wife she must be a Christian who would leave her hair unplaited and her ears without ornament, who would dig in the fields and plaster walls and leave her children fat and naked. But she only laughed and said she must enjoy herself a while longer.

Martin was still in essence the Luo boy he had been when he got married seven years before, whose whole world picture revolved round an idealised ‘home’ to which he would return in plenty and comfort after making his mark on the big world. The fact that Paulina was herself an important person at ‘home’, despite his disappointments, reinforced that picture, and she had made the house itself far more fitting to his expectations than most of his friends’ wives. And

yet there was a tension in the Nairobi air that left him not quite satisfied. Home might suffice for the primary education of sons and the marriage of daughters but the city was better for higher education and careers. A civil servant at his own level of employment would get a second-class train ticket - second-class, mark you - to show the continuation of his urban dignity right up to Kisumu, but then the home bus services were not very reliable and the markets were sometimes without bread or bottled beer, and one had come to rely upon the dry cleaner . . .

In June 1963 a group of women rather bigger than the usual number of Paulina’s club went to Kisumu in a hired bus for the celebration of internal Independence, feeling so safe, so mutually protective in spite of their squabbles, so moved by the half-understood thing that was happening to them, that there was a compulsion in them to be present. They went again in December for the full Independence celebrations and there Paulina spotted the little white girl who had been in Pumwani, with two children now and a black husband, and, though they did not really recognise her, they greeted her civilly in Luo and exchanged congratulations on the occasion. She was worrying about how to teach the women the National Anthem, since their Swahili was so bad, and about the new flag. But between the two trips something had died in her: word had come for certain that Martin was living with a coast woman and he did not write at all any longer or send anything to his mother, and though she knew that it was not surprising and that he had been patient a long time, her heart sank and she twisted the ring on her finger. But still her mother-in-law refused to admit it to be the truth, so though the older women envied her training and were eager to belittle her and expand on what they knew of Martin’s life, she composed herself and went on with her duties.

A week after Uhuru Day she went on an ordinary shopping trip to Kisumu. Apart from the new flags flying, everything looked very much as usual. One went into the same doors and bypassed the same doors as before, not by any law or antipathy but just by habit and familiarity. She accomplished her errands as usual, lingered a little over some dress materials and reached the bus stand only to be told

that the Lucky Strike bus had already left.

‘Left? But it’s hardly two yet and it never leaves till half past.’

‘Kisumu time. It has already left.’

‘He’s lying,’ put in the turn boy of another line. ‘If it had gone there’d have been a lot of people waiting like you.’

‘If it hadn't gone there would be people waiting, but you see because it has . . .’

‘The bus hasn’t gone. It’s being repaired. It will be back soon.’

‘No, it’s not being repaired. It’s being washed in the lake. And the people are in it. So it may not come back.’

‘Of course it will come back if there’s a chance of more passengers.’

‘If it were being repaired the people wouldn’t stay on it.’

‘The people went on Son! because they were afraid Lucky Strike wouldn’t be back on time.’

‘So it may not come back at all?’

‘No, perhaps not.’

‘And Soni is really gone?’

‘Yes, that I know for sure because I put my in-laws on it. But wait, wait, something will turn up.’

She waited till four and knew that no bus would start so late. The early morning dark held fewer terrors but the evening dark was for ‘rogues’. She could have gone to the Homecraft Centre, perhaps, or found enough money for the Christian Fellowship Centre Guesthouse, though it went against the grain to spend hard-earned money on food and beds. But she did not like the idea of sleeping away from home and continued to hang about in the unlikely hope of a lift being offered.

And there was Simon. When one came to think of it Simon was there at every turn in Kisumu. He always seemed to be in front of the Town Hall rather than in his own office, or at the station or at the Victoria Social Hall arranging about a meeting. What more natural than that he should be at the bus stand after duty, gathering news and passing the time of day. She always used to see him when she went to the Town Hall, which she sometimes had to do with a query about personal tax or to leave a message with the husband of one of the club ladies who worked there in the licensing department. Simon was a clerk in the health department but nothing seemed to keep him to his

desk. He had been at school with her elder brother and claimed to have recognised her at once. He was courteous and tidy, the sort of man who always wore a jacket even in the hottest weather. He generally seemed eager to talk to her, perhaps because his wife Martha was keen on going to Homecraft Centre too. One day Martha had come to the Town Hall and taken her home to tea in one of the new municipal houses. She seemed shy and nervous, though several years older than Paulina and a mother of three. So when Simon urged her to stay with them if a lift could not be found, and went on till nearly nightfall asking this driver and that if he could not help her, it seemed natural enough to go with him. Enough people must know by now that she had looked hard for a way home. AU the same she was a little uneasy. She was astonished to find no one at home but the little serving-maid who was sent off to buy food.

‘Oh, Martha must have taken the children to a film at the Centre. She’ll be back in half an hour. Just make yourself at home.’

So she sat primly on the edge of the sofa, suppressing the knowledge that a Luo woman does not go out with all the children when her man is due home and the meal not ready. The girl brought beer and rice and hot cooked meat from a hotel and then made her way to the kitchen to prepare her own meal. Paulina began to protest, but Simon was too strong for her. Was she not an old friend and a guest? Why did she shame him because Martha was careless enough to stay out? Was he not lonely and hard done by enough? And as she sat mesmerised while lie after lie poured over her, he plied her with food and drink and compliments, he drew closer and for the first time broached the logic of it - she was a married woman denied a married woman’s rights and respect, in custom she should seek a child where she could. She had the right. And everyone knew that she had not delayed in the town on purpose. There would be no shame. And she knew that there would be shame but not, for a barren woman, the public evidence of shame, and she bridled at his comfort and cast her eyes down and ceased to resist. As he took her she felt neither liking nor commitment but a kind of inevitable propriety, and before she slunk out in the morning, trying to avoid prying eyes, she knew without words being said that she would come again. She could not pretend that she could any longer do without.

She caught the Soni bus when it returned for the morning trip - there was still no sign of Lucky Strike and someone suggested it had gone off on private hire with a party of Youth Wingers. People at home confirmed that it had not appeared the day before and accepted her story that she had slept at Homecraft, but of course neighbours who were at the bus stop receiving guests and goods and letters by hand nodded and chattered among themselves and she never for a moment supposed that they were deceived. She told her mother-in-law that in order to complete her shopping and arrangements for the group she would need to stay over in Kisumu once a fortnight.

At Christmas time her husband came as usual. She was ill at ease and feared he would suspect her new well-being, but he was desperately tired and had had a little too much to drink so, though he murmured about hearths and babies, they had little time to come together, none for private talk. He swaggered out to the Boxing Day afternoon bus with three other young men returning to Nairobi almost without seeing his wife as a person and relieved that she had not asked questions about his life in Nairobi. She was, for the first time, glad to see him go, incurious about what women he might take up with, accepting at last her role as an absentee wife, hugging to herself the knowledge of perilous compensations.

The whole year passed like that. Martin did not come on leave. He sent word that he was going instead on a tour organised by his evening-class teachers. When recess came she did not go to Nairobi either. She sent word that she was attending a Singer sewing class in Kisumu. She did attend it for as long as she could provide the required materials, but she stayed with Simon of course. He had made an excuse to send his wife and children home for the school holidays, and an aged deaf aunt was staying with him while attending hospital, to save face. Once a fortnight Paulina had spent a night with him, in his house when Martha was away, other times in a friend’s house he had fixed, where people coughed and giggled as they walked through to the room prepared for their use. But her hunger was now so great that she could forget the other people as soon as she had taken her place on the bed that was so generously provided for her benefit. If she saw

Martha in the town they passed with a curt greeting. She felt less tired these days and more sure of herself: she was a little fatter and took more care to oil her hair and her skin. It was not surprising that people talked a bit. There was that club member whose husband worked at the Town Hall with Simon. And one communion day the pastor’s wife made the long journey to their local church on the back of her husband’s bicycle on purpose, it seemed, to bear Paulina off for a little talk on the responsibilities of community leaders and the discipline of Christian marriage which rarely (she said) allowed husband and wife to be together all the time since for progressive, educated people doing work and getting money was a natural preoccupation. But Paulina managed to head her off, discreetly bemoaning the concubine in Nairobi and the jealousies of the less able women in the club. All the same her mother-in-law was aware of the questioning and began to treat her more coldly.

The next Christmas Martin came. He did not let them know beforehand but appeared off the bus on Christmas morning, redeyed, lean and angry. Rumours had reached him in Nairobi and had been confirmed when by chance he met a brother of the friend who had allowed Simon the use of his bedroom, and the man taunted him with the knowledge. Blows had followed, and then some hours in a police cell, the need for a bribe and the loss of a day’s pay. What was worse, Susanna had heard about it and brought some of the Brethren to plead with him that his own behaviour had put Paulina into temptation, and that he should bring her back to Nairobi, forgive and forget. Fauzia had naturally had something to say about this and had stained his treasured suit with greasy dishwater. Though of course he did not divulge these details at home, Martin had loss of dignity to avenge indeed, and felt very sure that he had been patient with his wife’s ignorance and infertility. That she should now be so ungrateful as to deceive him was provocation intolerable to any man.

He beat her heavily and kept her home from church. This was not experimental like that long-ago beating in Pumwani: both had matured since then and grown apart, so that he rained down his blows more methodically, she tried to avoid them with the cunning of a now' separate and defensible person. She appealed to the headman to testify to her industry and modest behaviour at home, but the

headman shook his head, spat and said that it was not his business to interfere in domestic matters. Martin spent Christmas night in a bar while Paulina, bruised, and frightened as she had never yet known fear outside Nairobi, cowered behind a barred door. He then made a round of the homesteads, denouncing her and disowning her. Many of them received the news with a sidelong grin and several husbands assured him that they had had enough of clubs in any case. Before leaving on the bus on Boxing Day afternoon Martin broke two of her chairs and threw the clothes out of her best suitcase and took it away with him. He gave his mother five shillings and took a chicken and a pot of ghee for his wife in Nairobi. He did not mention any children or speak of bringing his Swahili wife home.

For three days Paulina stayed quietly in her house. She knew that this time she could not win. She also knew what she wanted. On the Monday after Christmas she reported to her supervisor’s office in Kisumu that her husband had assaulted her because he was taking another wife, accused her of infidelity and tried to set the club members against her. She had tried to bear an unsatisfactory marriage for eight years. Now she could bear no more. She would like a transfer to Kisumu where she could live in a municipal house and educated opinion would defend her. She was legally married and could not accept a polygamous arrangement.

The European was sympathetic but not unwary. She did not want any disgrace associated with the clubs. Paulina forestalled her by offering to undergo a pregnancy test. (She had learned a lot coincidentally with the Singer course.) She lived quietly in her mother-in-law’s compound, she said. What possible cause could her husband have to malign her if she were not pregnant by another man? The test being satisfactory in a manner of speaking, the supervisor sighed and gave in. The last thing she wanted was a quarrel breaking out in one of her most successful clubs. There was no job available in Kisumu immediately, but a few miles along the Ahero road there was a new centre with a small house available and plans for expansion. She would move Paulina there and instruct her in her new duties at a regular salary.

Paulina had already sent a message to Simon to warn him to keep out of sight. At home she found three balls of crochet cotton, two dresses and a towel missing from her house, but she packed up her other belongings without comment, gave her mother-in-law ten shillings so as to achieve a reasonably dignified exit, and piled up her furniture by the wayside to wait for the bus. There were enough sympathetic hands available to get her away without mishap.

When Martin reached Makadara Fauzia was away. She stayed away for three days and claimed when she returned that if he could spend holidays with his relations she could spend them with hers. She was fed up, she said, with fights and expenses and bad tempers all coming from a place called ‘home’ when she was doing her best to make a comfortable home for him here on a pittance.

That was enough. He beat her, this time, slowly and methodically, while her plaintive Swahili cries for assistance fell on deaf ears among those who had been taught, like Martin, that true disaster can only proclaim itself in the tribal language. He threw her things piecemeal into the road, which suddenly filled with black-veiled women ready to pick them up and lead away their weeping sister, filling the air with dazzling imprecations meanwhile. The neighbours did not exactly fear the curses but stored up the juiciest for future use.

The landlord came to complain, but this time friends and sympathisers prevented a fight. Martin was glad enough to get away and enlisted the help of the firm’s van to take his things to Kibera where a cousin of his, a very junior clerk, had got into desperate financial straits his first Christmas in work and was glad enough to share the house and expenses through the coming lean months.

January 1965, the beginning of the second year of freedom, was a time of newness for the country, such newness that for people who could read and write little seemed strange any more. Some were disappointed that big houses and farms did not, as by magic, fall to them, but most were comforted that someone they knew or called kin had met with promotion, land or first-grade housing, and if those people were preoccupied and much away from home that also was part of the new order of things. So for a young woman of twenty-four to move

alone to an official house, for her to gather women together and issue programmes to them and buy in stores and collect fees, this also was an acceptable part of the newness. She herself accepted it. Month by month her days grew more full and her home more pleasant - decent is what she would have said - as her regular salary and income from sewing and crochet came in. She had to buy food as she dared not send home to Gem, but at first she did not have many visitors except just for tea, so she could manage on about twelve shillings fifty a week. She soon started a garden but would not expect much from the poor and waterlogged soil. She could not get enough firewood either and often had to buy charcoal.

Though she did not write letters except about work the news filtered through to her mother and Martin’s mother and Martin, and people came from home expecting bus fares and blankets as from a big person. The facts of separation were accepted without comment (for after all not everyone can be a teacher and have a house to herself) and Simon began to come regularly, discreetly, so that her routine was tidy and tolerable and she did not often feel lonely. There was that one club trip to Nairobi which she saw afresh with a countrywoman’s eyes - parks. Parliament, big shops, not at all the homely Nairobi she had known, though she managed to leave the group for long enough to get in a few visits. She went to call on Amina and Rachel but Rachel had moved away, they told her, and she found that Joyce was already in school, had slimmed down and carried herself gracefully. She spoke Swahili very well. Paulina managed, between compliments to the child, to drop a casual query to Amina.

‘Martin is no longer in Makadara then?’

‘No, they have moved to Kibera.’

‘They?’

‘Yes, he and the young man he was sharing a house with. Did he not write to you?’

‘I did not know till last week that we were coming here,’ muttered Paulina, stretching the truth a bit. She had not known what dormitory they would occupy but the outline of the visit had been arranged for months. ‘And I have no time to go to his place of work.’

‘With freedom or without freedom, with a job or without a job,’ enunciated Amina carefully, ‘you are not going to get a baby that way.’

Paulina thought it over on the long night journey back, whenever she was not showing the others how to stow their bundles away or find their way to the toilet. Martin could, of course, have taken steps to get his dowry back (he had paid the three cows only, no other instalments) but in fact his threats did not go beyond bluster and the church ceremony was an extra hold on him. His coast woman had still not given him a child and there was still some hope of Paulina’s proving fertile, since she had conceived more than once. Her family insisted, too, that he should give her another chance to get a child. Her own mother had visited her and made stern enquiries about the accusations against her, but they were proud of her position and glad that she could sew for them and send a little money, so they did not pursue the matter. She heard nothing from Martin himself but one of his workmates made a formal call whenever he came to Nyamasaria for the weekend.

A few days after returning from Nairobi she got a message that her father was seriously ill and she should go home. It did not take long to leave word with the class members, send a note to the office and get ready to go. She had not been home since Independence - since her conscience had clouded - but she knew it would be no different. The home was pre-eminent in the hves of its people and since it had never been subdued it could not, either, be liberated.

The buses were still sparse and she had three-quarters of a mile to walk from the stopping-place. The high banks beside the main road were full of wild flowers, the side paths were familiar, the earth brittle in the dry season, the stalks still not cleared. There were familiar faces, but not so many at mid-morning: school was in session and it would be market day at Luanda. Some women would have made the long trip there. The gap in the hedge that marked the way into the homestead came in sight, but suddenly it seemed, after all, different. A knot of people greeted her quietly - there were far too many for a normal time, but at least they were not crying. He could not have died yet. And she had brought the money for the hospital if need be: it could not so suddenly be time to die.

The difference was that her father was there, dominating all their thoughts, demanding attention as he had never done during his

lifetime. It was nearly four years since she had seen him. The homestead was ordinarily a place of women and children. They had their own routines and satisfactions. It was something special when father came - she remembered sometimes preparing a chicken for him, when she was still a girl, or helping her mother smooth the earthen floor into better shape. He had worked, till his retirement the year before, on a sisal plantation beyond Nairobi, in the great bare plain that spread eastward towards the coast. She had never been there, nor had her mother, and she had very little idea of what his work was. Sisal was tricky stuff to handle, could cut your hands to pieces. Her grandfather used to make rope quickly by hand out of the long fibres, looping the knot round his toe. That was a long time ago; she remembered her grandfather’s funeral and quickened her step. Father never seemed to make much money out of this tedious work, month after month, with few stories or excitements to tell about when he came on leave. It sounded to be a bleak place, close-built, mean little houses, one shop on the plantation, church services in the rudimentary school-room, now and then a wandering musician to gather the Luo people together, nodding to the song and throwing pennies, or Kambas gathering for their mysterious, exhausting dance, up and down, up and down, up and down, with football whistles endlessly screaming. And out of it they got school fees for a time, uniform, a few clothes, tax money, and the set of chairs which was the pride of her mother’s eyes.

Her little sister was running now to greet her, and she could make out her brother from Kisumu, already arrived, leaning against one of the poles that supported the overhanging thatch of the house, and her mother detaching herself from a group of women at the doorway, coming to bid her welcome. She and Martin had once seen her father off at Nairobi Station on his home leave, but he would not come to their house for a meal: he did not want any delay in going from that strange country to his own, and of course there was nowhere they could get him a place to sleep.

Her mother, always small and wiry, was sagging with weariness. Her feet were bare and she set them flatly on the ground, one at a time, like an old woman. Her dress was soiled and the shuka tied crosswise on her shoulder gave her the look of other tribes, where the women

were more puny and servile than among the Luo.

‘How is he, mother?’ Paulina asked, as soon as the greetings had been exchanged. ‘Has he seen a doctor? Do you want us to take him into Kisumu? What can we do?’

‘Oh, you youngsters,’ her mother replied quietly, ‘you think there is no death, only doctors. There is nothing you can do for him except be near - and stop the people singing over him. They did that yesterday when they thought he was sinking and really it was hard for your brother to make them stop. Poor man, he didn’t himself know whether he was alive or not.’

Paulina entered the house and found the sick man lying in the centre of the room where the rope bed had been lifted so that he could see visitors by the shaft of daylight from window and door, rather than lying in the dark and secret recess. He was so thin and shrunken that for a moment she hardly recognised him, thinking back to the grandfather who had been more constantly at home and whose gradual retreat from flesh had not, in childhood, alarmed her. Father had always been straight-shouldered, unbending, laying down the law as far as her recollection of him went. He used perpetually to wear a cloth cap and an old-fashioned shirt like a mihtary uniform. Now to see the sparse white hair uncovered, the skinny shoulders in a tattered singlet that still did not disguise the heavy development of muscle there had been, the thin chest wheezing, was to lament a shaping force of which she had never been much aware before. Perhaps, after all, he had been subdued by his employment and for that reason had kept it a world away from home, so that the home remained intact.

‘How are you, father?’ she asked, knowing now that the bus fare and the doctor’s fee would not be needed.

‘As you see me, girl, as you see me. Is it Florence? I can’t see very well in this wretched dark house.’

‘No, father, I am Paulina - Akelo.’

‘Akelo, you have come after a long time.’ He spoke with an effort between long pauses. ‘And Were - is Were with you?’

‘No, father, he has not yet come. From Nairobi it is a long way.’

‘But if you can come . . .’

The effort was too much, and he turned aside, coughing.

‘Now you must not get tired talking. Baba Akelo,’ one of the older

women insisted. ‘She will come back and see you after she has had some gruel. She has just come from a journey.’

‘Ah yes, gruel,’ murmured the old man, and hopefully they brought him some, in a mug with a handle as the gourd was too heavy, but he turned aside and left them holding the cup.

Paulina obediently went to drink her gruel in the kitchen hut and to hear the news of the course of the illness. Her older sister, Florence, arrived later in the morning. Her other brother was making a longdistance delivery and had not been contacted yet. All day they drifted in and out of the house, talking softly but each time with less and less risk of disturbing the dying man. About four o’clock a shriek from Paulina’s mother, who had been sitting silently beside the bed, alerted them to the other sudden silence. The struggle for breath had ended.

Immediately the house was filled with wailing and voices outside took up the lament till it spread beyond the home itself to the whole neighbourhood. People began to slash and twist branches from the trees and run up and down with them, singing and weeping. Paulina found herself weeping and singing with the rest. Fragments of old praise songs which she thought long forgotten came to her unbidden. She did not understand all the allusions made by the old people, but the pattern was familiar and it gave tongue to what she felt.

People were bringing chairs, stools and benches from all around and arraying them outside the house ready to place inside for the wake as soon as the body had been prepared and arranged. One of the uncles was brandishing a sharpened stick as though it were a real spear and making mock rushes as though to attack bystanders in a frighteningly realistic way: it was easy to believe that in the old days more deaths had resulted from the celebration of one, when armed warriors would campaign to the edge of the district in honour of the name of the lately dead. As soon as it could decently be done, Paulina’s brother summoned her and sent her about the purchase of tea and sugar for the crowd from her own money, while he sent out messages for his own wife and other relations to come urgently, mustering all those who would be travelling or could send a verbal message by road transport: he also sent for the nearest market carpenter to come and see about the coffin. An uncle set aside a beast for slaughter next day, as night was already approaching, and, after tedious labour over

refreshments in which the neighbouring women shared, Paulina settled herself iii a corner of the house for the long night of singing and story-telling in honour of the dead. Her mother was sitting rigidly in the best chair, her cries now stilled, her eyes sunken with weariness, her feet twitching from time to time out of exhaustion, her face a mask of extreme dignity. She was ennobled by her loss in the eyes of all around. It was as though after thirty years in that homestead, seventeen of them in which she reigned supreme, her father-in-law and his wives now dead, her husband constantly away, the decision hers to plant, to harvest, to store, to sell (only once he had renewed the house in that time and arranged about the dowry cattle), she had momentarily become the household head, a person to be consulted and deferred to. Of course she had grown-up sons and so would not need to be inherited by another husband. Soon the sons would be in charge and she would retain just enough of her gardens to support herself and the youngest child as long as support was needed.

Paulina had got used to a regular routine of work and sleep and the obsessive requirements of ritual left her drained and light-headed, even apart from the emptiness of unexpected grief. The next three days and nights were a blur to her: constant cooking and washing of utensils, new visitors arriving with new loud bursts of lamentation and considerable appetites. They made the actual burial the next afternoon, as her other brother managed to arrive in the morning, with his wife, and the hole had been prepared against his arrival and the coffin quickly knocked up. A lay preacher came to lead the service and speeches were made before the grave was filled in. They kept silence, as was customary, so that the dead could recognise - although the box was already screwed down - if any bewitcher was at hand. But witchcraft was powerful in Ukambani, someone murmured afterwards, and none of those people was around here. Perhaps they had resented his superior strength, or else resented the withdrawal of it on retirement. After all, he was an elderly man and, as the preacher said, we all come to our time. Only custom has never recognised that time as natural. Perhaps that was why you had to keep watch the customary days, in case death should still be prowling and find you vulnerable, asleep. Or perhaps it was just because no home could find sleeping- mats for so many, or accommodate them without breaking the

complex rules of avoidance.

Paulina, her eyes smarting from the now unaccustomed wood- smoke, noticed that her mother, under the guidance of her sisters-in- law, was now wearing a clean dress and had put on over it her husband’s favourite shirt. No one now expected her to tear her clothes off in farewell to the body of her husband, as used to be the custom. You took from custom what suited you, and so it had always been. The gap was now being beaten down in the hedge so that the ritual shaving could take place outside, and she knew that some of the younger people would refuse, submit only to a token cutting of the hair. What did it matter? Of course for women, nearly always wearing a scarf, it was easier than for men, but if, obscurely, the sacrifice of her hair would appease her father’s spirit, then it was a small price to pay. The saved ones, after all, gave up their beads and plaits and see- through nylon dresses in the name of Jesus: it was not so very different. There was nothing new about the conflict of opinion. When Tuda, in the story, refused to go to South Nyanza to mourn his nephew Dodo, killed by an elephant, on the grounds that in a place where elephants were so dangerous he might get killed as well - and then what would become of the lineage? - the story-teller did not rebuke him. It was conceivably a point of view.

The days passed, the meat was finished, and they killed a few chickens so that the men, at least, could eat and be satisfied. Even the most modern women would not break taboo on such an occasion as this. Her mother did not brew beer and her sisters-in-law had both been away, so they served only tea and gruel instead. Paulina’s dress was stiff with sweat - she had brought only one change and there had been little time for washing - her eyes red, her bare scalp prickly against the limp and smoky chiffon of the scarf. Her hands were scraped and sore from the continual breaking of sticks to feed the fire. She was so tired that she was getting people’s names mixed up, and the uncles asked perpetually, ‘Where is Were? You sent a message? Does he say he is coming?’ And she had to say every time, ‘There is much work. I think he may not get leave.’ Her mother said nothing but looked at her reproachfully, for when a woman’s father dies her husband must come and sleep with her at home, when the mourners disperse, to signify his protection and the continuing of the line.

So on the fourth evening she told her mother that she must leave next morning, for she had already stayed away longer than she had asked permission for.

‘But there are still a lot of people and the sugar has run out again. Who will see to the visitors?’

‘I know, mother, but you must see me as a man who has to go back to work. I have no one else to support me, and I have given the customary time. My brothers’ wives are not working. They will have to help.’

‘And the sugar?’

What supposedly sorrowful guest had been complaining to the widow about sugar at a time like this?

‘Mother, I have nothing left that I brought except just the bus fare back to Kano. I will arrange with Tito to send him twenty shillings at the end of the month if he gives you that much sugar. But I have no fields to dig, mother. If these people all come empty-handed they cannot go on for ever being fed.’

‘But it would be a shame to my husband if we do not feed them. And some have brought me money or things to eat. However, if your people expect you I cannot stop you going.’

The sisters-in-law were not very pleased, but Paulina and her brother left together on the early morning bus. They were sitting awkwardly, wedged among the baskets of produce, on opposite sides of the aisle, he two rows in front, so that they could not have talked much even if they had not been so stiff and sleepy. Several passengers recognised them and offered condolences, but others, who had started at three in the morning, remained huddled under sacks or old raincoats against the night chill and the weary day ahead.

‘You do not think Were will come?’ asked her brother, when they climbed out in the early morning bleakness of Kisumu, a few pink wisps of cloud still visible over the western hills.

‘I’m sure he won’t. You didn’t put the announcement on the radio?’

‘No, I thought our people would all hear by word of mouth, and the expenses are enough, God knows.’

‘He turned me out, after all. He will not feel free to come.’

‘Hmm, perhaps not.’

He was still hostile, suspicious.

‘And you know I have to work, just as you do. The sisters will manage the rest of the guests. I have done what I could.’

‘Yes, you worked hard. Virginia thought you had forgotten how to live at home: she was pleased to see you taking part. I will leave her there for a time to keep things in order.’

‘She won’t be pleased at that.’

‘No, she won’t, but mother cannot be left alone, and as our first child does not start school till January there is nothing to prevent her staying.’

‘Well, enough. I must be getting back. We haven’t met for a long time.’

‘You know our house in Kisumu. There is nothing to stop you coming there.’

‘I will try. And anyone at the Centre can show you where I am. I don’t suppose you often get out, but when Daudi is driving he could often stop in.’

‘I’ll tell him. Now to face the music at the works. I never realised we should miss the old man so much.’

‘Yes, we thought he wasn’t there but perhaps in a way he was there all the time.’

‘Well, we all have our way to make.’ And he left her, without tenderness but at least with a limited courtesy. That was one thing about funerals: they made you face up to other people.

Then back to the round of too wet and too dry, day in, day out, until well into the second year when, as though by a miracle, her periods stopped and she had difficulty retaining the water and felt a little queasy when it was hot. She wondered whether to go to a doctor, to her mother, to the supervisor. In the end she told nobody. As her figure filled and rounded the men about the place took a little more notice of her, the women found her happier and thought she was beginning to enjoy the fruit of her labours. Her morning sickness was carefully concealed from them and her longings were not remarked on as she generally ate alone.

Nobody ever questioned her about Simon, whom she referred to casually as ‘my in-law’ if introductions were necessary. Perhaps some

of the neighbours thought that he was her husband visiting from Kisumu, but many close to her knew that she was a wife of Gem and did not doubt that she lived alone on account of her childlessness. And some certainly knew Simon through his work or because of kinship, but they said nothing. Even the two saved women in the group were not unkind to her, though they told stories pointedly sometimes of broken marriages miraculously healed and children born after long years of waiting, for her ways were quiet, like theirs, and Simon came and went so inconspicuously that no one was forced to challenge him.

After the third month she began to sew herself looser dresses. Simon was sated these days, and took her quickly and carelessly, and it was not till the end of the fourth month that he asked her and she replied. He was glad, but he told her, and she already knew, that Martha’s people would not stand for his taking a second wife and that he himself did not want to get into conflict with Martin - after all, no one could blame him for wanting a fertile wife and he might even wish to claim the child.

They were speaking quietly in bed in the little house. It was hardly ten o’clock and there was still the noise of heavy traffic along the Kisumu road. Paulina had never felt more alert, more detached, more sure of herself. She stepped out of bed and put on a robe and a pair of rubber sandals.

T thank you for the child, Simon,’ she said. ‘It is what I wanted. Whatever quarrels may come, no one can doubt that the child is mine. You also have had what you wanted, and there is no need to become involved in my quarrels. A child of mine does not have to look to a father who will not stand up for him. Go now. There will still be buses running. Tell my friend Martha that you were kept late by a workmate wanting to talk in a bar. She has been patient with you. She will not start to make a noise now. Repent towards your blessed in-laws if that will make things better for you. But go, just go now. I have a longing to be alone.’

His eyes showed relief as well as offence. Wordlessly he put his trousers on, checked his pockets and closed the door quietly behind him. She could hardly hear his footsteps as he walked away.

Paulina was now carrying herself heavily, and the ladies she taught at last began to whisper behind their hands. In the sixth month she

started attending clinic and the young man from Martin’s office stared uneasily when he came at Christmas time. She put in a request for maternity leave to begin in March 1967 but she did not go away. The baby was born in hospital in Kisumu in the middle of the month and she called him Martin, and then Okeyo, after the father who had recently died.

She came home on the second day. ‘Home’ was the community work house in Kano and soon it was thronged with visitors. After that short absence in which the world was turned upside down for her she looked at it with new eyes. Lying on the metal bed where she had slept alone for the last five months, with the baby beside her in a basket-cot which, defying superstition, she had bought in advance and padded herself, the new mother looked about her with pride and hustied little Margaret Odongo, who had been helping her in the house for more than a year and was now promoted to a canvas bed and a salary of thirty shillings a month, about her multifarious tasks. The cement floor had been swept clean and there was a reed mat in the bedroom. Flowered cotton curtains hung at the windows and a wooden suitcase held the baby’s clothes whil' her own hung in the wardrobe, with the most precious of the cups and plates in a box below. There were two oil lamps and she could hear the clink of mugs being washed on the concrete slab outside. Water was carried from a communal tap - there was no longer the daily trek to the river or to the muddy pools of the rainy season - and ten could be seated, at a pinch, in the sitting-room, though the three-foot table covered with an embroidered cloth would only be used by the most highly honoured visitors. The new sewing- machine, guaranteed to pay for itself in the next year, stood beside the wardrobe.

Paulina lay back and watched the flies buzzing in and out of the open window shutters and a ray of light full of dancing particles striking the end of the bed where a new towel, for handing the baby to visitors, was neatly folded. She had pushed the cot well back out of the glare and a square of net kept the flies off. She was wearing a cotton dressing-gown over one of her old dresses and lay stiffly, sore from the stitches and the heavy bleeding, casting a new eye of ownership on everything around. The customary gifts of meat for the new mother were simmering on a brazier in the outside kitchen. Simon had sent

his deaf old aunt to the ward with an envelope containing a hundred shillings. Her brother had brought twenty shillings and a shawl for the baby. He was nearly eight pounds, still red, with damp curls of hair and a piercing cry. Her breasts were beginning to stiffen and he fastened on them fiercely, hurting her. There was nothing she lacked.

Two days later her mother came, having heard the news, bringing her youngest daughter, now in standard three. Both of them fell on the baby, giggling and cackling till he cried. The mother respected the house. She stayed with distant cousins in Kisumu and came out on the bus each morning. She looked bent and old nowadays. Her wrapper was never quite clean. Her shoes were cracked and she needed new ones. The little sister needed a pen for school and Paulina knew she ought to have new blouses too, and promised to make them up later on. She would have kept the child during the school holidays but her mother would not agree, though she did not give any convincing reason. She asked if Martin knew about the baby - if he would come - if Paulina would go to Nairobi - but asked nothing else, as though afraid of her daughter, awed by the neat house and the sewing- machine. But still she was happy that a flood-gate had been opened and Paulina, softened by her joy, was glad to have made her happy and submitted to her blessings, while the little sister stroked the basket- cot, the woven bed-cover, the new soft towels and the cotton napkins.

After a month Paulina returned to her classes and demonstrations. The women were happy for her and she was more respected. If a man occasionally banged or shouted at her door after dark, that was not to be wondered at, and he would soon hear a chilly command to be off. Margaret enjoyed the new dignity of looking after the baby and Paulina was not too far away to breastfeed him regularly and make sure that all the utensils were clean and covered. She took in dressmaking and fitted herself out smartly with the proceeds. Margaret was decently clothed also and the pieces made odds and ends for her little sister and the brothers* children at home. Her life was full, so full that when a young widower from a road haulage company came proposing to set up house with her - he had three-year-old twins, and did not want to leave them with a young wife even if he could afford to marry with dowry again - she shrugged him away without even considering the proposal. Okeyo was still sucking, and

she was a married woman with a husband busy in a far-off place.

Two years passed and Paulina’s first delight in the new baby sobered into acceptance. She loved him and kept close to him but he did not fill her life. A Luo baby was meant to widen the social circle, not to constitute it. Sometimes, when she had flu in the wet season or had to teach after a sleepless night when the baby was restless, she wondered if there was any end to this way of life.

CHAPTER