Free A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Page B

extreme discomfort, he saw that she was weeping, and looked away: the dog was wandering among the young trees; it stopped beside a crowd of camphor trees, raised its hind leg and passed water.
    ‘I am sorry,’ Dr Lynd said, suppressing a sniff, holding a white handkerchief to her eyes. She was a grey-haired woman with falling flesh on her cheeks and under her eyes. She daily flitted about the compound – between the hot-houses, the laboratories and the seed-beds – a solitary being, like a ghost.
    ‘Don’t let it worry you,’ he said, his eyes vaguely following the dog.
    ‘I tried not to, but – but – I hate them. How can I help it? Every time I see them I remember – I remember—’
    He fidgeted on the grass, felt his ridiculous position in relation to this woman from whom he wanted to get away now that the urge to tell her about the dog had faded. But Dr Lynd was in that mood – a sudden upsurge of pure holy self-pity – when one feels closer to another person, even to a stranger, and ready to confide in him one’s innermost dreads and burdens. So she told him about the incident that had plagued her life, had shamed her being. She had lived alone, at Muguga, in an old bungalow overgrown with bush on all sides to the roofs. She had loved the house, the solitude, the peace. It was during the Emergency. Many times the DO warned her to leave the lonely place and go to Githima or Nairobi where she would be sure of protection and security. She would not hear of it: the stories of women murdered in their remote farm-houses did not frighten her. She had come to Kenya to do a job not to play politics. She liked the country and the climate and so had decided to stay. She had neverharmed anybody. True, she often scolded her houseboy but she also gave him presents, clothes, built him a little brick house at the back, and never worked him hard. He was a small Kikuyu man from Rung’ei who had apparently been a cook or something during World War II, but had been without a job for a long time before he came to her. Between the houseboy and the dog had developed a friendship which was very touching to see. There came one night, it was dark outside, when the boy called her to open the door rather urgently. On opening the door, two men rushed at her and dragged her back to the sitting-room, the houseboy following. They tied her hands and legs together and gagged her. She waited for them to kill her, for after the initial shock she had resigned herself to death. But what followed was no less cruel and barbaric than if they had killed her. Her dog had barked at the two men. But on seeing the houseboy it wagged its tail and held back its attack. But the houseboy hacked it to pieces. Blood splashed her clothes. She wished she could faint or die there and then. But that was the terrible part, she saw everything, was fully conscious … They took money and guns from the safe. Later two men were arrested and hanged; the houseboy was never caught. She had to buy and train another dog. She had never been able to outlive the heavy smell, the malicious mad eyes of those men – no – no, she would never forget it to her dying day.
    Thompson looked at her, recoiling from her voice, from her body, from her presence. Both left the field, and took different paths, almost as if they were ashamed of their latest intimacy. He felt rather than knew the fear awakened in him. In the office, he tried to suppress the low rage of fear, but only thought of the dog. And he remembered the other dog as the headlight caught its eyes. What happened to it? What would have happened if the bull-mastiff had jumped on Karanja and torn his flesh? The hostility he saw in the men’s eyes as he approached them. The silence. Sudden. Like Rira. There the detainees had refused to speak. They sat down and refused to eat or drink. The obduracy was like iron. Their eyes followed him everywhere. The agony, lack of sleep, thinking of how to break the silence. And in the