a faster beat. Rajan turned his back on the pretty girl. She obviously knew the drill; she hoisted her hands on his shoulders. Other fans jumped onstage and lifted their hands onto those ahead of them, and soon the dancing troop had formed a convoy. This was mugithi, the train dance, bringing onstage the stories that Rajan’s grandfather Babu had narrated about his life building the railway.
That night, even as he danced mugithi and led the brigade of old and young alike trooping through the Jakaranda’s uneven and crammed dance floor to imitate the movement of the train, hands on shoulders and thick waists, feet falling with the perfect synchronicity of a centipede tread, his eyes were downcast, looking for the high heels that could only belong to the kissing stranger.
He had kissed many women. Since rising to prominence in Nakuru—the measure of his celebrity being his regular features in the Nakuru Times—female attention had never been in short supply. In fact, so many were on offer that he and Era, his childhood friend and bandmate, had developed codes to distinguish the women: News in Brief was the tag attached to the skimpily dressed; Long-Term Investment was reserved for the big-bodied; Coming Soon referred to the striking young girls about to blossom into womanhood; Takeout meant petite girls who could simply be packed away like a bag of chips.
Many other women, in shapes and sizes that defied codification, would steal backstage and commend Rajan for his singing. He would politely acknowledge their compliments, even when he was inclined to tear away and hide—from the drunks shouting because they were hard of hearing, from older women clinging to vestiges of youth. Or pretty girls with stinking mouths. In the spirit of uhuru, such yardsticks were waived and those wishing to test the limits of their newfound freedom were encouraged to proceed backstage.
It was hardly a backstage, just a tiny enclave where the musical equipment was loaded after every performance, sharing a wall with the butchery. Humans would pile on top of the stacked equipment and try to make a different kind of music, the neon lights flickering outside, the clouds of smoke from the butchery providing enhanced stage effects.
A week before the kissing stranger arrived on the scene, a horsehaired woman had wandered backstage and brayed her affection for Rajan. She tripped over the equipment, while still clinging to her glass of beer. Sprawled on the ground, Rajan had motioned for her to join him, but she was too drunk to lift a leg. Rajan walked over and touched her hair. Her horsehair wig fell off to reveal silly cornrows. He offered a hand and her plastic nails fell off. The false eyelashes dropped off when she cocked her head to look squarely at him. The woman removed her dentures and threw them into her beer glass. When she unhooked her bra, its stiff cups collapsed to reveal shriveled breasts. Rajan had fled and sought Era’s intervention. Era took one look at the woman and said: “Ugly cows belong in the butchery!” And with that, the woman, animal naked, was rolled over to the butchery where Gathenji received her with philosophical gratitude: Ciakorire Wacu mugunda. That might sound like an attempt to redistribute resources, but in those days, the young men called it growing up. They sat and laughed and toasted their green-turbaned bottles the following day, then drank and laughed some more as they narrated the events of the night. They played music and more besotted fans crawled backstage for a repeat performance.
It was remarkable how few words were exchanged backstage, which some band members also called kichinjio or the slaughterhouse. Perhaps Era and his band saw no need for further communication; like animals, they used spoor to pick their prey. But not everyone was willing to play the game. Only weeks earlier, a girl called Angie had flatly declined to cooperate with Rajan, even though she went backstage and undressed. “What do I mean to you?” she had demanded in a calm voice.
Rajan had propped himself on his right elbow and looked intently at the girl. Even in the faint light, he could tell she was strikingly beautiful. Her naked breasts, like filled jugs, stood erect, the wide hips seemingly out of sync with her slight frame. Her calm and beautiful presence appeared misplaced amid the riotous din from the butchery, the chorus of drunks ordering fresh rounds, the whimper of music equipment under the weight of two adults.
Rajan had kept quiet.
“Soooo, did you hear my question?” Angie had repeated without any hint of annoyance. Rajan could feel his indignation rising, like heartburn after a good meal. What did the girl expect him to say? And why did she impose her expectation that she should mean anything to him?
Angie had gotten dressed and stood to leave. “If you want to see me, I will be at Moonshine tomorrow at four p.m.,” she announced. “They serve nicely brewed tea.” Moonshine was another previously whites-only establishment, and young African women were quickly catching up with white culture, like having four o’clock tea. If this was the new African woman, Rajan shuddered, he and his ilk were in trouble. The era of free things was about to end.
Rajan had grudgingly honored the appointment the following day but arrived half an hour late.
“There is no hurry in Africa!” Angie said cheerfully. “You must know you are worth waiting for.” She was sitting by the pool, next to a whitewashed wall. An inverted image of Angie was submerged in the water, an image that threw Rajan’s mind to his grandfather Babu’s story of his treacherous journey by boat from India to Mombasa many years before.
Rajan had approached the girl. She looked remarkably different from his night visions. He remembered her spiky hair falling all over her face. Now it was pushed back and pinned, accentuating her forehead that shone against the sun. The high cheekbones were still sharp, perhaps sharper than an artist’s chisel, and her calm face, almost childlike, contradicted the mature, worldly mask Rajan had seen at night.
Accustomed to the dark and the comfort afforded by multicolored lights, Rajan had blinked like an animal out of his lair. He realized for the first time how rare it was for him to face the daylight. He typically slept through the day and sang at night. He found the sun blinding. He did not know what to say, for he never had to say anything to women. They all arrived at his feet seduced by his music, and hurled their bodies at him without a word. The best effort he ever made was to stretch out a hand and pick his chosen few from the sea of besotted fans. His microphone was the magic wand that drew them to him; without it, he was powerless.
Angie held his hand and squeezed it, her eyes dark with power and mystery. He cringed and thought of the image in the pool, envisioning their gazes mirrored in the water. He felt like he was drowning in the pool of her eyes and his hand went limp in hers. Unable to keep his grip, he lowered his gaze and pulled his hand away, then excused himself to go to the bathroom, although he felt no urgency at all. He used the back door and made his exit. He had not uttered a single word.
Quite often, Rajan woke up in beds where he could hardly recall how he’d gotten there in the first place, but where he did not need to utter a single word to get things going. Quite a few times, it was with a hint of regret, dodging kisses from stale mouths or breaking free before his captors could grant his leave, extricating himself from a mess he did not wish to get tangled in. In such circumstances, older women were usually the culprit. He dreaded their insistence on small talk that could only end in hurt—he was there to have a good time, not chat about life. Worse still, some sought his thoughts on their immediate future under a black ruler. But the one thing that he enjoyed was bedding different generations of women and assessing their values and attitudes toward life and love. He had discovered that all women, whether young or old, sought an affirmation of love—or at least some declaration that they meant something to him. The truth was, they did not, and he suspected that they knew as much, yet couldn’t quite leave him alone.
Then the kissing stranger arrived and disrupted everything. Just like that. For the lavender-flavored kiss on that balmy June night in 1963 breathed into Rajan a restlessness that infected his mind, and later his heart.
There were the awkward moments when he’d stop in his
