Read A Grain of Wheat for Free Online Page B

feast. The day we hold Wiyathi in our hands we want to drink from the same calabash – yes – drink from the same calabash.’
    Silence followed these words. Each person seemed engrossed in himself as if turning over the words in his mind. The woman cleared her throat, an indication that she was about to take up the thread from Warui. Mugo looked at her.
    Wambui was not very old, although she had lost most of her teeth. During the Emergency, she carried secrets from the villages to the forest and back to the villages and towns. She knew the underground movements in Nakuru, Njoro, Elburgon and other places in and outside the Rift Valley. The story is told how she once carried a pistol tied to her thighs near the groin. She was dressed in long, wide and heavy clothes, the picture of decrepitude and senile decay. She was taking the gun to Naivasha. As luck would have it, she was suddenly caught in one of those sporadic military and police operations which plagued the country. People were collected into the square behind the shops. Soon came her turn to be searched. Her tooth started aching; she twisted her lips, moaned; saliva tossed out of the corners of her mouth and flowed down her chin. The Gikuyu policeman searching her was saying in Swahili: Pole mama: made other sympathetic noises and went on searching. He started from her chest, rummaged under her armpits, gradually working his way down towards the vital spot. And suddenly Wambui screamed, the man stopped, astonished.
    ‘The children of these days,’ she began. ‘Have you lost all shame? Just because the whiteman tells you so, you would actually touch your own mother’s … the woman who gave you birth? All right, I’ll lift the clothes and you can have a look at your mother, it isso aged, and see what gain it’ll bring you for the rest of your life.’
    She actually made as if to lift her clothes and expose her nakedness. The man involuntarily turned his eyes away.
    ‘Go away from here,’ he growled at her. ‘Next …’ Wambui never told this story; but she never denied it; if people asked her about it, she only smiled enigmatically.
    ‘It is like our elders who always poured a little beer on the ground before they themselves drank,’ Wambui now said. ‘Why did they do that? It’s because they always remembered the spirits of those below. We too cannot forget our sons. And Kihika was such a man, a great man.’
    Mugo sat rigidly on his stool. Warui watched the lamp that badly lit the hut into an eerie haziness. Wambui rested her elbows on her knees and wedged her chin into the cupped palms of her hands. Gikonyo looked abstractedly into space.
    ‘What do you want?’ Mugo asked with something like panic in his voice.
    Suddenly there was a loud knocking. All eyes were turned to the door. Curiosity heightened the tension. Mugo went to the door.
    ‘General!’ Warui exclaimed as soon as the new guests entered. Mugo walked back behind the two men. One was tall, clean-shaven, with close-cropped hair. The shorter man had his hair plaited. They were some of the Freedom Fighters who had recently left the forest under the Uhuru amnesty.
    ‘Sit down – on the bed,’ Mugo invited them, and was startled by the sound of his own voice. So old – so rusty … today … tonight … everything is strange … people’s looks and gestures frighten me … I’m not really afraid because … because … a man’s life, like mine, is not important … and … and … God … I’ve ceased to care … I don’t … don’t … The arrival of the two men had broken the mounting tension. Everybody was talking. The hut was animated with a low excited murmur. Wambui was explaining something about the Uhuru preparations to the man with plaited hair. In the forest he was called Lieutenant Koina. The tall one was the General, General R.
    ‘A sacrifice! A sacrifice!’ Koina exclaimed, laughing. ‘And let me eatthe meat. A whole ram. In the forest we only ate bamboo shoots and