transform into an image different from the one in his mind. At other times, he would walk into the washrooms at the Jakaranda to retrace her steps; he made so many trips there that his band members started speculating that he was suffering from a serious case of diarrhea.
In moments of despair, he stood on street corners scanning the women passing by before marshaling up the courage to confront one with a ready line, only to falter upon closer scrutiny. He thought the kissing stranger had dimpled cheeks, with a gentle smile playing on her full lips as she seductively swished away. But in other visions she would appear chubby and unsmiling. Occasionally, he found he had assigned her features from different women from his past until he got all mixed up. Then he would remember he’d never actually seen her face because it had been so dark.
One morning, Rajan went from door to door inquiring about young women who wore high heels. He pretended he was a fashion photographer looking for models to parody the flamingo dance, which was all the rage at the time. But no one ever remembered seeing anyone in high heels, the question only serving to remind many that they did not wear any shoes at all. The irrationality of his inquiry was amplified by a middle-aged woman who remarked: “Could anyone go tilling the land or carrying a load of firewood on her head in the kind of shoes you are describing?” The woman clasped her cracked hands to display her dismay and squeaked, “Yu kiini!”
He did not gain access to any white homes because no one answered the doorbell and he was afraid of venturing in unannounced, since most homes had signs warning of mbwa kali, or ferocious dogs. The search bearing no fruit, Rajan broached the idea of placing an advertisement in the Lonely Hearts column of the Nakuru Times. But who was he looking for? Was she tall or short, slight or heavy? How many Nakuru women would fit that bill? Was she white, black, or brown? He froze at that question. Who among the three groups could have kissed with such sophistication? Probably a white girl, but then Africans, Indians, and Arabs were racing to make up for lost time, and could probably give whites a run for their money after only a couple of months of freedom.
Had he known the ethnicity of the kissing stranger, would that have narrowed his search and yielded better results? He reckoned that would actually be problematic, for how could he describe the subject of his admiration without arousing his prejudices about her imagined history? After all, humans do not wear identities on their faces. Where would he place her in a land where dozens of communities existed? And how could he describe himself anyway? A Kenyan of Indian ancestry seeks a lean, pretty woman who can wear high heels in the dark . . . ?
And would it be accurate to describe himself as Indian when his only encounter with the subcontinent was through the stories he had heard from his grandparents? He realized to his horror the perils of history and the presumptions that come with symbols. A turban may be the mark of a Sikh, but the Akorino of Molo and Elburgon wore them too. In that place, anybody could be anything. And when things appeared set and certain, nature erupted to remind him of the temporal nature of man. A dormant volcano leaped to color the land ashen gray. A landslide tossed a mass of red earth to bury houses in the bowels of the earth, erasing the markers that people had used to define their existence.
Eventually exhausted by his fruitless search, Rajan returned to his routine at the Jakaranda of drinking and eating and performing.
The Jakaranda wasn’t just home to Rajan’s personal melodrama; the atmosphere of the hotel was also spiced up by the butcher Gathenji’s own spectacle—his tools of trade a sharp cleaver, acerbic wit, and swift feet, which were unfailingly thrust in ill-fitting flip-flops, the big toes nosing the ground for any trouble. Picture the man in what was once a white dust coat faded brown with oil and dirt, a fleshy face grinning at an impatient customer, one hand caressing the carcass, the other gently tearing the strips of flesh as though it hurt the animal to cut it up.
“Choma, chemsha, au tumbukiza?” Gathenji would ask, pausing to look at the customer. “My friend,” he would continue, “let me tell you, undo kwo undo. If you want this for a roast then you need a little fat. Just a little fat to help it sizzle,” he would explain, the knife slicing through a hump the color of bad milk. He would meticulously gather the meat and the chops of hump and drop them on the scale with the violence of Moses crashing the clay tablets on Mount Sinai. The scale would perform a jerky dance before the meter rested on the exact weight requested. Gathenji would tap the metal lid to ensure the weights were right, then flash a toothy grin at the waiting customer. “Sawa sawa?” he would ask, piercing a metal rod through the pieces of meat, rolling them into a parcel before throwing it over his shoulder so that the bundle landed on the kitchen table with a soft thud. “Hiyo ni choma!” he would then shout, indicating that the meat was for roasting.
“How do you manage such accuracy?” a puzzled customer would pose, while handing Gathenji the money.
“My friend, let me tell you. Undo kwo undo. One by one. I’m the meat master,” Gathenji would reply with a hint of pride as he retrieved the change—the hundred-shilling notes in the right breast pocket, fifties in the left, the mashilingi in the left side of his trousers, the twenties in the right. All other big notes were stashed deep inside Gathenji’s layers of clothes, in a pocket sewn in his coat that he called kabangue, which meant he would rather die than part with its contents.
As the meat roasted, Gathenji would march around to different customers, complete with his chef’s hat, like an admiral inspecting a guard of honor, and gently place a chopping board bearing sizzling meat on the table to placate some enraged customer who had been waiting for hours.
“This is kionjo. Just to whet the appetite as the meat cooks,” he would say. Hungry patrons would grab the pieces faster than they were cut, and praise the butcher for a great job. And wait.
But when the meat they’d ordered was done, bewildered revelers would form a line at the butchery demanding their pound of flesh, for Gathenji seldom sold them the requested weights. Since the area was generally poorly lit, and drunks often dimmed their eyes as alcohol took effect, none of them ever noticed the thin, colorless string attached to the scales. No one ever wondered why Gathenji always wore flip-flops, which allowed easy pull of the string using his toes. Those who had been shortchanged threatened not just to go after Gathenji’s kabangue but his throat as well. More often than not, the disputes tended to boil over and spill onto the music stage, ending in a fragile truce that would hold until Gathenji delivered the entrails, the only conciliatory dish available, but itself a subject of constant conflict.
“This offal is not equivalent to the meat you stole from us,” someone charged one evening.
“Who said I stole meat from anyone?” Gathenji demanded, meat cleaver in hand, the naked lightbulb dancing above his head. There was a tense silence. Someone coughed nervously. Gathenji relaxed and dropped the cleaver and walked clumsily toward the complaining party, his large belly protruding, the flaps of his dust coat swishing like a duck’s tail.
“One of these days, we are going to roast that belly of yours,” someone declared, eliciting laughter.
“It would roast well in its own fat,” another remarked.
“My friend, let me tell you. Undo kwo undo. The Bible says one eats where one works. I eat from the sweat of my brow. We have a saying that when someone is full, he should cover his stomach. But if there is a hungry man, that I shall feed.”
“So what happened to our meat?” the voice that had accused Gathenji of theft insisted.
“My friend, let me tell you. Undo kwo undo,” Gathenji returned confidently. “Did you not hear of the fool who quarreled with the fire for consuming his meat? Or do you think fire eats vines and mikengeria?”
“Wee,
