Hour of the Red God Page 6

  —She helped me, she says. Without her, I’d have starved.

  —Do you know where she was from?

  Honey shakes her head. —A village in the Loita Hills. She never told me its name.

  —Well, this is helpful, Kiunga sighs.

  Mollel has been impressed so far with his young partner, but—perhaps it’s tiredness, perhaps it’s something else—he seems edgy, irritable. He’s certainly not helping the interview.

  —Why don’t you take a walk, Mollel suggests.

  At least Kiunga’s professional enough not to argue. He gets out and walks away from the car. They see a flash and glow as he lights a cigarette, cradles it, and it becomes nothing more than a red dot.

  They sit in silence for a while. Then Mollel starts asking questions.

  * * *

  According to the stories, there are a few—a very select few—who see the world as it truly is: raveling slowly back toward creation. They are the lucky ones. For them, death is not an end; it is the beginning of life, when the scavengers, the hyenas, the birds, the worms come together to put flesh on the bones so that the morning wind can breathe animation into them. Life, for them, is a joyful process of ever-increasing strength and virility, until the final, happy years when one begins to shrink to perfection, safe in the arms of a mother.

  Not for them this world of chaos and atrophy. No wonder some are envious, persecute them, call them idiots, cretins, wazuzu.

  But Mollel remembers his mother telling him that these are the truly wise ones. That they have the ultimate gift of starting with knowledge and gradually unlearning it. What is left is truth.

  * * *

  So this is how he interviews. Starting in the here and now and steadily guiding the witness back. He finds the minutiae of recent memory unhelpful. He prefers the distillation granted by forgetting: what is left is truth.

  * * *

  Honey has not seen Lucy for three months. She’s been keeping watch for her, hoping to see her, and hoping not to see her, because if she saw her, that meant Lucy was back on the streets.

  She had told Honey that she’d met some people, some Christians. Lucy wasn’t religious, but these people had not gone on too much about God and all that. They’d offered her somewhere to stay. They’d talked about training, even getting her school certificate. It was the chance of a new life, said Lucy. She’d be mad not to take it.

  Honey wasn’t interested, herself. She’d seen people like this before. Their idea of salvation more often than not meant dull drudgery. And for the first time in her life, she was doing well financially. Her plan involved saving enough to turn her back on the street on her own terms. But Lucy was different. She’d been having trouble lately with a certain client, and she wanted out.

  Though they were flatmates—they shared a small one-room apartment in Kitengela—they did not see each other enough to share every intimacy. Both preferred not to discuss their clientele. It was one thing to do this job, quite another to talk about it. They overlapped rarely, Honey working nights and Lucy mostly days. But on one occasion, when they both found themselves at home and exhausted and had curled up together on the narrow bed they usually shared in shifts, Lucy told Honey that she feared for her life.

  She never told her the name. It was someone very powerful and influential, though, and Lucy had made the mistake of demanding too much from him.

  Not more money—he wouldn’t have had a problem with that. No, she’d been seeing him for a while, and she had found him kind and charming, and very generous. Her mistake was thinking it was genuine. One evening, when she thought the time was right, she had told him that she wanted to quit the paid relationship, and she suggested a girlfriend arrangement instead.

  Turned out he didn’t like that one little bit. He already had plenty of girlfriends. Not to mention a wife. Why would he want to complicate matters?

  He dropped her. When she tried to make contact again, to apologize, she was warned off. But she was foolish. She didn’t take the advice. She couldn’t afford to lose such a regular client, one who treated her so well. He’d been so kind to her. Surely they could go back to the way things were?

  He didn’t see it that way. Nor did whoever he sent. Lucy had showed Honey the bruises on her wrist. The offer from the Christians had come at just the right time. She didn’t need to be asked twice.

  * * *

  —Your friend’s on his second cigarette, says Honey. He must be getting cold.

  —He’ll be okay, says Mollel. He’s a tough guy. Tell me how you met Lucy.

  * * *

  —It was three years ago. I’d been told there was money to be made on K Street. I needed it. I hadn’t eaten for days. But I didn’t know what I was doing. Oh, I knew what to do—village life had prepared me for that. But I didn’t know, for example, that you had to ask for the money up front. I learned that when I got thrown out of a moving car.

  It was Lucy who picked me up.

  She bought me egg and chipsi. And a soda, the first one I’d ever tasted. The bubbles made me laugh so hard they came out of my nose.

  She was kind to me. She took me to her flat, cleaned me up, let me wear her clothes. She made me understand what this life meant: plenty of hassle, plenty of danger. But also money, freedom.

  We worked together for a while. There’s always demand for two girls. But that’s really a beginner’s game. You do it for the safety, to learn new tricks, but you can’t charge double, so in the long run it works out better to operate alone.

  * * *

  —How long had Lucy been working the street before you met her?

  —She told me she came to Nairobi a year or so before I did.

  —Do you know what she was running away from?

  Honey gives a hollow laugh. Then she is silent. In the darkness, Mollel tries to make out her face. Is she crying? Angry?

  Eventually she says,—I know what I ran away from. I always assumed it was the same for her.

  —What was that, Honey?

  Instead of answering, Honey says,—I thought you’d understand, Mollel. Once, you were a Maasai. But the way you dress, the way you talk … you’re a city man now. You’ve left it behind.

  —Yes, I have.

  —That’s why you, of all people, should be asipani.

  It takes him a moment to recall the meaning of the Maa word.

  —I am trustworthy, he says.

  —Prove it, she says. Promise me, whatever happens, you won’t make me go back.

  —No one can make you go back, Honey.

  —I can’t go back. I was betrothed the day I was born, and I knew I’d be put to the knife the first day I bled. But I escaped—and you know the punishment for that.

  —And you think Lucy was running from the same thing?

  —Whoever she was running from, says Honey, they caught up with her in the end.

  9

  Mollel shaves by touch, a relic of his village days, when he learned to shave his head years before the razor ever touched his face. This being Sunday, he takes the blade to his scalp once more. He does not need the mirror before him to know that he is going gray. The stubble falling in the sink tells him that story. He does not need to look to know that he is getting thinner. He knows it every time he puts on his clothes.

  His wife used to say to him, If you get any thinner, you’re going to disappear. He feels as if he’s been getting thinner for the last nine years, but he is still around.

  He bends and washes cold water over his smooth head. It runs clear. No blood. He can hardly remember the last time he nicked himself.

  * * *

  He recalls the day he became an elder. He’d already moved from the village, then, but this was before he’d rejected that life completely. He had been working in the city as a guard, his dreadlocks as fearsome as any uniform. They were long, impeccably plaited, and stained red with henna. During the day, when the guards were off duty, the Maasai used to work on each other’s locks, singing faintly and dr
eaming themselves out of the city.

  The dreadlocks were Mollel’s mark of being a moran—a warrior. Then, when he was in his mid-twenties, word reached him that the village elders had decided he was to join their number. He felt grief—grief for his locks, grief for his youth. He felt resentment, too: many morans continued into their thirties. They were, in many ways, more powerful than the elders. They could have jobs, they could live in the city. He did not want to move back to the village, to marry, to have children to herd the goats the way he had done. Besides, there was a girl who lived in the compound he guarded in the city, a pretty Kikuyu girl with an open smile, training to be a secretary, who always took the time to talk to a Maasai when he came off duty.

  * * *

  Still, he went.

  * * *

  It was the mother’s duty to shave her son’s locks. They woke before dawn, his nose full of the strange, familiar smell of smoke and dung and animals. He was led to the boma, the women ululating, the other morans chanting the deep, breathy, rhythmic song that rang in the ears. There he saw his mother. She had laid out a freshly tanned calfskin, specially prepared. He knelt before her, bowed his head in submission for a final time. She took a gourd filled with milk and spirits and poured it gently over his head. The milk ran down his cheeks. She commenced the cutting, tugging each lock as she applied the blade, taking it back to the skin. When she had a clear patch, she’d start to shave, and Mollel remembered the taste of milk changing to a taste of blood as she cut into his scalp: it was a sign of honor to bleed without flinching, and because his mother knew that this was expected, she had cut him gently where a small vein ran high on his temple, so that he bled profusely but without pain.

  When he rose and washed his head, he looked down at the small, bloody pile of locks in the center of the calfskin. He rubbed his hand over his scalp, which had not been bare since boyhood, and felt the breeze on his skin. It was as though his past had been cleansed from him and his future was his to determine. He knew then that he would not become an elder. He felt free.

  * * *

  This Sunday morning, Mollel finishes shaving. He takes his pills. Then he goes to his cupboard and takes out a suit: black. He pulls the plastic wrapper from it and sniffs for mustiness. It has been a long time in there, but the suit smells okay. He puts on one of his usual work shirts, a white one, and slips into the suit. The trousers are loose. He has to double up the waist an inch or two and tighten his belt. The jacket feels all right, so long as he wears it open. He takes a pair of shiny shoes from a box at the base of the cupboard, taps them instinctively to remove any scorpion that might have nested there, and puts them on his feet. Then he rises, finds his only tie—gray—hidden at the back of the sock drawer. He hangs it around his neck but does not tie it. Only then does he step into the hallway to look at himself in the tall mirror there.

  And he smiles. He always feels slightly comical dressed like this. An impostor. He is much more comfortable in the slacks and shirt he wears most days, or even his police uniform. They are work clothes. No attempt to better himself. Yet this suit—even if the style is somewhat out of fashion these days—is a good suit. He wife chose it. It makes him look—her word—distinguished.

  Not bad for a Kajiado goatherd, she would say on occasions like this. Not bad at all.

  * * *

  Kiunga raises his eyebrows when Mollel answers the door. —God, boss, you make me look shabby.

  —You look fine, says Mollel. Kiunga is wearing jeans, a shirt, and a lightweight jacket, all made from the same denim material. The shirt is untucked and the trousers hang low on the hips—but deliberately, unlike Mollel’s. Kiunga’s ensemble has printed letters all over it, brand names, and despite the affected casualness, all the items are crisply pressed. Mollel even gets a whiff of cologne. The young man has gone to even more trouble than he has.

  —What time does the service begin? Mollel asks.

  —Nine. We have to hit the road. Traffic shouldn’t be too bad, but—where do you want this? Don’t want you to get oil on your good suit.

  Kiunga has brought the bike up with him.

  —Leave it in the hallway. Adam’s staying with his grandmother for a few days. That reminds me— Mollel takes the tie from around his neck. —Knot this for me, would you? He normally ties my ties for me.

  * * *

  Calling George Nalo Ministries a church is a bit like calling the Maasai Mara a petting zoo. The campus—as the sign terms it—is sited just off the main Embakasi road, down a specially laid section of gleaming, fresh tarmac with sidewalks and neatly clipped lawns and bushes alongside, smoother and cleaner than any stretch of public road in the whole city. Approaching from this driveway, one sees a tower emerging from above the trees. It is modern and elegant: a twenty-first-century mission campanile.

  Kiunga is directed by a warden in an official vest to an overflow car park, which leaves them some distance to walk. This suits Mollel. He wants to get a sense of the place. They park and join the ever-increasing throng flocking to the sound of the bells.

  Mollel is glad that he’d dug out his suit. There’s quite a range of finery on display: here, a father and three young boys clad in identical designer outfits descending from a gold Range Rover; there, a family knocking the dust from their shoes, repairs visible on some of their clothing, but all neatly and respectfully presented nonetheless, the little girl in pale yellow and gold chiffon with a broad satin sash and lace around the hem, suitable for a fairy princess going to a ball.

  Mollel notices that there are a lot of younger adults present. This church appears to be particularly popular among that generation. The girls are smartly dressed, modest without being conservative—a few knee-length skirts, plenty of patent leather high heels. The men are in sharp suits or, like Kiunga, the strange, hybrid baggy-chic, American-style, all immaculately pressed.

  * * *

  They round a bend in the path, and Mollel sees the church, a wide, low structure with a pair of massive doors standing open at the front. It makes him think of one of the aircraft hangars at Wilson Aerodrome, and indeed, as he approaches, he realizes that the building is much larger than he first thought; it looks low only because it is so wide. Drawing near to the doorway, which must stand four meters high, he feels as though he is being sucked into the mouth of a giant whale.

  * * *

  —Hi! says a young man, taking Mollel’s hand and shaking it vigorously. I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Is this your first time?

  Mollel looks at the space before him, which is slowly filling up. Inside, the building reminds him less of an aircraft hangar and more of Nyayo Stadium.

  —First time here, he confirms. How can you tell? You must have hundreds of people coming here.

  —Thousands! The young man laughs. He is dressed all in black, black jacket, shirt, and tie. Mollel sees twenty or so others identically dressed, greeting everyone as they come in. This usher, though, has one differentiating feature: the thick dreadlocks, pulled back and tied behind his head. For the second time that day, Mollel is reminded of his own youth. Such dreadlocks are not a common sight these days, being mostly a preserve of Maasai and of reggae fans. And there is one other group that favors the style: the criminal sect, the dreaded Kikuyu gang–cum–mystery cult whose very name inspires a unique terror in Nairobi. The Mungiki.

  He looks around for Kiunga, who has effortlessly maneuvered himself to be greeted by an attractive young woman.

  —We have seats for six thousand here, the usher continues, and on a Sunday there are two thousand more standing. Plus the people who come during the week. But you know, you get to spot the people who stand out. Like you, for example, with the ears.

  Mollel impulsively raises his right hand to his earlobe.

  —We’ve got a few Maasai, not many, continues the young man. My name is Benjamin, by the way. You are?

  —Mollel.

  —As it’s your first time, Ole Mollel, can I suggest that you and your
friend sit near the front, on the bank of seats over there? You’ll get a good view and be able to follow the service more easily.

  Mollel thanks him. He is impressed that the youngster has addressed him with a Maasai honorific. The greeters are obviously well trained. But despite his use of the Maa word, that young man is no Maasai himself. His accent sounds Kikuyu. Which would tie in with the dreadlocks—unless they really are just a fashion statement.

  Kiunga gives a low whistle as they make their way to their seats.

  —Did you see the sweetie I was talking to? he asks. Wow. I gotta change churches. Where do you usually go?

  —I don’t, replies Mollel. Adam’s grandmother takes him to the Catholic cathedral. Me, I’ve not been inside one of these for ten years.

  * * *

  They make their way through toward the front of the enormous hall and along a bank of plastic seats, smiles of other congregants greeting them. The place is filling up. To one side of the large stage before them, a band is setting up. The guitarist picks out some notes on his electric guitar; the drummer checks his kit. In front of the stage, a man carrying a TV camera on his shoulder is chatting to a young woman with an earpiece and a microphone. Looking around, Mollel sees another couple of TV cameras alongside the stage and another high up behind him.

  —They record this? he asks Kiunga.

  —It’s broadcast live. You haven’t seen it?

  —I don’t have a TV, confesses Mollel.

  —How do you watch football games? Do you go to a bar?

  —I don’t drink. And you know I don’t like football. Adam watches it at his grandmother’s.

  —Man! says Kiunga, shaking his head. You’re going to need to buy that kid more than a bike.

  Before Mollel can ask what he means, a man takes to the stage. He picks up a microphone from a stand, taps it, prepares to speak. The hall is still filling up, but the background buzz drops slightly.

  —Is this Nalo? asks Mollel.

  —No. This must be one of the junior pastors. He’s kind of a warm-up man.