Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Moses Isegawa Page A

bright coloured kitenge cloth, tied loose on the head, fell wide on her shoulders so that her face was half veiled from the sun.
    ‘Are you well, Mwalimu?’ she called out boldly. Her voice had a studied vibrant purity: the tone was rich and pleasant to his ears. There was a calculated submissive deference in her bearing as she stretched out a small hand and looked at him full in the eyes, suddenly lowering them in childlike shyness. He swallowed something before answering.
    ‘I am well. It is a bit hot, though.’
    ‘That is why I came here.’
    ‘Ilmorog?’
    ‘No. Here in your place. Have you any water to spare? I know that water is like thahabu in these parts.’
    ‘It has rained recently. Ilmorog river is full.’
    ‘I stopped at the right place then,’ she said cooingly. Her words and voice lingered in the air, caressing the heat-filled silence between them.
    ‘Come into the house,’ he said.
    The water was in a clay pot in a corner of the sitting-room under a bookshelf. She drank from a cup and he watched the slight motion of her Adam’s apple along the bow-tightness thrust toward him. Her neck was long and graceful: she-gazelle of the Ilmorog plains.
    ‘Some more, if there is,’ she said, panting a little.
    ‘Perhaps you would like some tea,’ he said. ‘They say tea heats the blood in cold weather and cools it in hot weather.’
    ‘Tea and water go down different gullets. I would like another cup of water. As for tea, don’t trouble yourself. I will make it.’
    He gave her another cup of water. He showed her where the different things were. He felt a little generous within, even a bit warm. But he was suddenly shaken out of this mood by her vigorous laughter. He instinctively looked at the zip of his trousers and he found it in place.
    ‘Men, men,’ she was saying. ‘So it is true, what they say of you in the village. You are indeed a bachelor boy. One saucepan, one plate, one knife, two spoons, two cups: don’t you ever get visitors? Don’t you have a teacher’s darling girl?’ she asked, a wicked glint in her eyes.
    ‘Why! How long have you been here?’
    ‘I came yesterday evening.’
    Yesterday! and she already knew about him! He was tense . . . he felt his six months’ security threatened: what did they really say about him in the village? Was there nothing that could cleanse him from doubts, this unknowing? He excused himself and walked toward the classroom. Let her spy on him, on his doings, the defiant thought gave him momentary relief: what did it matter? He was only an outsider, fated to watch, adrift, but never one to make things happen.
    He heard feet bustling and books rustling. The brats had been watching the whole scene through windows and cracks in the wall. Their exaggerated concentration on their books confirmed his suspicion. He now put the question to himself: what did the children really think of him? Then he dismissed it with another: what did it matter one way or the other? He had taught for so many years now – teaching ready-made stuff must be in his blood – and one did all right as long as one was careful not to be dragged into . . . into . . . an areaof darkness . . . Yes . . . darkness unknown, unknowable . . . like the flowers with petals of blood and questions about God, law . . . things like that. He could not teach now: he dismissed the class a few minutes before time and went back to the house. He wanted to ask the stranger girl more questions: what was her name? Where did she come from? And so on, carefully, gingerly toward the inevitable: had she been sent by Mzigo to spy on him? But why was he scared of being seen?
    He found the floor swept: the dishes were washed and placed on two sticks as a rack on the floor to dry. But she herself was not there.
    2 ~ Munira’s life in Ilmorog had up to now been one unbroken twilight. It was not only the high esteem in which the village held him: he cherished and was often thrilled by