To the market? by Natasha W. Muhanji

Published in Qwani 02

-

“Hey! You right there! Yes! You! What colour does blood turn to when it rots?”

I still remember the slow movement of my eyebrow and how high I cocked it at his unusual question almost a decade later. That had been the most unexpected question I had gotten sent my way ever since someone in town had asked me to sell them my stool for five hundred shillings. That was two years before I met him. My skepticism made me pass up on the money and as I lie on my unmade bed, I think of how nice it would be to have five hundred shillings for simply defecating in a polythene bag. I do not even have ten shillings to pay to use the toilet at the corner of the street.

The afternoon sun is hot against the corrugated iron sheet roof and I can feel it slightly creaking. I have never forgotten what thermal expansion is since I completed secondary school because of this damned roof I now sleep under. Dense heat hangs in the small room I am inside and I have a cramp in my neck from sleeping on the mattress without a pillow. I fear my stomach might be digesting itself as I lie on this thin mattress against my jungle green bedsheet. My vision is blurry and I feel fatigue perch on my bones which I am beginning to see through my skin. I have noticed that as the days go by, the small room feels bigger. I can feel that its corners are stretching wide such that it has started holding more air within it. There is seemingly more air for me to breathe and choke on in fear; more space to weigh upon me because I cannot occupy it. I wonder if it is hunger that is taking me on this spiral of delirium and as much as I am afraid, I am intrigued.

I try to sit up but I have no strength in my arms. I know for sure that if I walked the five-kilometer stretch to the farmers market I would get some carrots to eat there at least, or chance upon a tomato that had not gone fully bad. I might even relieve one of the mandazi vendors of the weight of a few of their products and help their arms be in commission for a few more years. The question of the hour though, is will I be able to leave the house?

I have been psyching myself to sit up and walk out of the door for the last thirty minutes but the tiredness seems to have gotten the best of me. I am so tired nowadays. Age perhaps? Or maybe it is because I ate two days ago. As I lie in the small room, under the tin roof with a couple of holes bringing in light, I feel that I have been baptised in a lake of sloth and laid down on my cheap mattress by some unseen force. I am compelled to lie back and wait for my body to give up so that I might disintegrate. I refuse to believe that it is laziness because kujaribu nimejaribu. I have tried so much to look for money but it is always the same story over and over again.

Hakuna kazi, economy ni mbaya sana.

Yes, the economy is horrible, that much I can tell, but why must I be the one to suffer? I see such nice cars on the Express Way and I know that the malls are always full during the weekends. Is the economy really horrible or is it just crafted that way? I already know the answers to my questions and I have no idea why I keep asking myself the same things over and over again. The rich always get richer and the poor seem to always become poorer. I remember having this same conversation with him two months after he asked me about blood rotting and that was nearly ten years ago now. Things are still the same, worse if not.

It was on a hot Wednesday afternoon that I first met him. I had been walking back to my flat in a faded pinstripe suit, its coat hanging on my left shoulder, and a brown envelope in my right hand. I had taken a different route back to my flat then, and was vehemently regretting it for it was much longer than I had anticipated. My shoes were unbearably dusty from the trek and I had not eaten anything since morning.

“Hey! You right there.” I stopped and glanced around searching for the source of the voice. I spotted a man who appeared younger than me seated near the gate to my flat.

“Yes. You. Wewe. What colour does blood turn to when it rots?”

The absurdity in his question made me pause in my tracks, my right eyebrow moving so high it nearly touched my hairline.

"What do you mean?" I asked, squinting slightly and wondering whether I had heard him correctly.

"What colour does blood turn to when it rots?” he repeated.

“You look like a doctor in that suit so I believe you have an answer," he added, his face extremely serious.

"Are you sane?" I asked, wondering if it was even safe to speak to him.

"No, I am Njue," he laughed, extending his arm towards me, "Just moved in."

As I lie on my thin mattress in the heat, a decade later, I am not sure whether he said his name first or whether he laughed at my confusion first. I seem to be forgetting things nowadays. My memory has been chipping away over the past few years and I do not even remember the type of shoes Njue was wearing as he sat on that pavement stone anymore. I am too tired these days. Hopelessly tired and my memory has gaps.

I fear that I might be slowly dying without realizing it. Life is hazy and everything is a blur. The mabati house I live in is my only saving grace for if I died, I would not die dishonorably, lying in a thicket somewhere or under a bridge. I would die in my house. They would find my body in a house. I like to think that I am not a sorry sight yet subconsciously I know that I am. The caretaker let me stay in this house because it was to be broken into scrap but the owner said it was not necessary and so I chanced upon a roof to rest under. Nobody bothered to come here. The tin-roofed house was about fifteen kilometers from town, at a far corner in the Mukuru slums. There had been many attempted robberies on me but the thieves always left empty-handed, I had nothing on me to be stolen, just a tattered mattress and my jungle green bedsheet. I remind myself that I am fortunate enough to have a roof over my head, despite the fact that I have not eaten in three days. Life is terribly difficult for me and at my age, I often find myself crying out to my mother who has been gone for the last twenty years.

"Mother, how must I survive in this world if the world seems not to want me?"

Njue was a really odd guy. He had a collection of science fiction books that were the first thing I noticed when I entered his flat. The room still had the sharp smell of paint from the repainting the previous week and you could see small flecks of cream paint that had dried up on the floor closest to the walls. I thought of how the landlord should have hired me to paint the walls instead. Growing up with an odd type of intricacy to me, I always preferred cleaning to cooking. Cleaning was definite, to eliminate dirt and aim to purify filth. Cooking, on the other hand, was too haphazard for my liking. The lines on my exercise book pages were always drawn straight and with care so that ink might not veer off of the course of my ruler. If it did veer off I had to rip off the page and start my ruling again. Mother chastised me because of my wastage. I recall how I nearly fell to my knees to scrape the paint off of Njue’s floor but I was not about to be the odder one between us.

He had a novel that talked of the stages of natural human decomposition and its cover was a close-up shot of what I could guess was rotting flesh. There were nine maggots in the shot, two to the left side of the photo and seven to the right. I was disgusted yet intrigued when I noticed what the book was about. I asked Njue what he was doing with such a book and he explained that he bought it in town for seventy-two shillings. To him, that was an offer he simply could not refuse. I did not question him further and he smiled at me, asking whether I understood the stages of decomposition. I gave him a wary glance and he laughed, telling me that he was far too cowardly to kill a person.

I did not see Njue daily. Sometimes he was around, other times he was not. I did not know what he did for a living but he was not a rich man – we did live in the same housing complex after all. His shoes were not very good either.

I had learned from my mother how to judge people based on their shoes and despite thinking her idea incredulous at that time, I found myself subconsciously doing it as I grew older. Perhaps I was simply looking for a way to feel connected to my late mother. I did not understand. Njue was not always around but when he was, I would know. He would either be seated near the flat's gate staring ahead at god knows what or chatting with one of the women doing their laundry near the communal clothesline. Other times he would be seated on one of the dusty stair blocks with a cigarette in his right hand, his face expressionless. I was always fascinated by his facial expressions and the stark contrast between them when he was alone, smoking introspectively, and when he was speaking to someone. I soon came to notice that his face was not as animated when he spoke to me compared to when he spoke to others though.

"Mbona unanikazianga sura? " I had asked him one time humorously as we were having a drink by the flat stairs and he looked at me seriously.

"I do that because I feel that you are a man of great suffering. There is no need to put up a pretentious expression with you because you would see through it immediately. I have noticed how observant you are."

His reply had caught me unawares as I had not realized that he had noticed me observing him. I did not know how he had actually taken my keen observation of him because he had not expressed discomfort before. I laughed uneasily and mentioned that the Tusker I had in my hand tasted blander than usual.

"You remind me of somebody that I used to know," he started, taking a swig from his bottle that was halfway empty. "His name was Moha. I used to call him Moha because of his distinct Mohawk but people thought it was because his name was Mohammad.

Moha was a childhood friend of mine back when I lived in Limuru. Moha always had one injury or another whenever I met him. Damn cats! He always said, whenever I asked him about it. One day when we were still teenagers, I came across Moha near the highway next to the neighborhood as I was walking back home from school. He had been coming from running an errand I presume because he was carrying some potatoes in a black polythene bag, about three eggs lay on top of the small pile he held in his hand. He had not been to school that day and when I asked him why, he seemed to not hear me. I noted that his dark eyes were darting around as he stood by the highway and I suggested we walk a few meters away and use the footbridge to cross instead. I did not mention that he looked apprehensive about crossing the road. He followed me to the footbridge, walking slowly up the stairs, and asked me if Nyambura, a girl he obviously liked, had been to school that day. I answered animatedly, teasing him slightly and feeling some relief as a satisfied smile appeared on his face. As we reached the top of the bridge and started crossing the road from above, he asked me to hold his paper bag for him so that he could tie his shoelaces and I obliged, taking it in my right hand. It happened so fast," Njue paused, taking a swig of his now nearly empty bottle and breathing slowly as he continued.

"He threw himself off the footbridge and fell head-first onto the road, cracking his skull open. I stood on the hot stone bridge, feeling my legs give away as I realized what had just happened. I remember a woman who was walking behind us let out a scream but I seemed not to hear it at that point. Blood pounded in my ears and they rang. Everything was a blur when I regained my bearings and slowly walked down the other side of the footbridge. Cars were hooting and a small crowd had formed around Moha when I got there. I recall hearing the bystanders sadly recounting how he fell onto the tarmac. I vividly remember falling on my knees, my body shaking as I screamed. Acha ujinga msee! Moha bana! Moha kua serious aki! I do not understand why I did that, it just came rushing out of me. I could not believe that he was gone just like that. I looked down at his dislocated leg and he was wearing a pair of red bata slippers."

"By the time I was calm enough to talk, a traffic policeman had gotten to the scene, and with my ears still ringing, I recounted what had happened. The woman who had been walking behind us confirmed that I had not pushed him. The policeman accompanied me to the neighborhood as we left his colleague at the scene, taking care of the body collection. My vision was unfocused as I walked down the path to Moha's home. His mother asked me why he did it and I looked at her then, wondering what I was to say. I said I did not understand why. I dropped my eyes, staring at the polythene bag full of potatoes glistening with egg white from the broken eggs. Everything to me, since then, has always seemed unreal. I have been walking through life with light steps, always wondering and never finding answers. We were only sixteen."

Njue finished his story as I tried to understand how I reminded him of his friend. He noticed my confusion, to which he said, " Moha was really observant. He was deeply introspective and he seemed like he was going through a lot. I am not even sure why I just told you everything that I did, pardon me."

I silently looked ahead, placing my bottle of beer on the ground in front of me. I did not know what to say to Njue's story and so I said nothing at first. I simply extended my arm towards him, fist-bumping him.

"Iza, pole sana bro," I managed. I genuinely felt bad for him. That was extremely traumatic for a sixteen-year-old to go through. Perhaps that was why he always looked so disconnected from the world. Was he always thinking about his friend's suicide?

In five months, I developed an unusual relationship with Njue. He would buy beers and invite me to sit by the stairs, talking about absurd things or sitting in silence. Other times when I had cash I would buy too. We never spoke of our families and I did not know if he had a family. There was an odd camaraderie between us that was unspoken. We shared laughter and worries, sometimes we went to the local pub to catch football games, staggering back to the flat in the wee hours of the morning. I did not understand why we suddenly acted like we had known each other our whole lives.

It was during one of those days when I was still getting to know Njue, that I was walking back to my flat after tarmacking all through industrial area. Leaving my CV with the watchmen as they gave me pitiful stares. I felt like a sojourner walking through a barley field with a patch of sweat on his sun-scalded back and a straw hat on his head. Just like in the old Western films I watched as a child, I felt like I had some key to an ancient discovery in my beat-up rucksack. I found my thoughts oddly humorous. Perhaps I should have been an actor or a scriptwriter. I must have dreamt of such a scene or watched it before, but I could not clearly remember because I only had half a chapati and some strong tea for supper the previous night. My stomach was rumbling. I thought then, that if I had followed my heart, perhaps things would have been different. Maybe I would have pursued film and I would be wealthier.

Karibia customer upate protector na bei nafuu! I slowly made my way past the side street vendors towards the flat and felt my ankles ache from walking. I was passionate about film when I was in university. I wanted to pursue my dream after I graduated but getting money for film school became too difficult. One needed money to make money. That dream was a thing of the past. Thinking of the past made me recall my morbid conversation with Njue but the thought passed just as fast as it came. I found myself subconsciously redirecting my thoughts whenever I happened to remember that conversation by the stairs.

I was still thinking of my dead dream when I walked into the gate and stumbled upon Njue on the phone, chatting away with a prominent crease between his brows. He nodded a greeting to me and then held his index finger out, indicating that I should not go in just yet. I stopped and sat on one of the yellow jerry cans in the compound, waiting for him to finish his call. The compound of the flat where we lived was uneven, with grass growing on one strip and a mixture of rock and moss on one end of the wall. It smelled like Toss and stagnant water. I spotted a rotting banana peel near the window of the ground floor room, the broken shell of an egg was right next to it, meters away from the black polythene trash bag labeled Klean Environs. The communal trash was always taken to Dandora on Saturday mornings and before that, we all bore with the smell. I wondered why it was so hard for people to properly store their trash and to be mindful of others.

“Sorry, that was my friend I was on the phone with. He said that his son has refused to go to school because he doesn't think it will help him in life. Says he wants to be a poet. Na hii economy?” He mocked, changing his expression. “Roses are red, mafuta ni mia mbili, nyumba ni free, kama uko na nguvu. What do you think? ” I had then burst out laughing, clutching my stomach and Njue followed soon after. We laughed till we had tears in our eyes. I remember that he took a deep breath to recharge his laughter. I could tell then, that it was more because of his lungs as another round of thunderous laughter escaped his dark dry lips and he coughed at the end of it. I do not remember much of how the conversation went after that or how that issue was resolved but I remember exactly how the scene played out, right up to us laughing. I have thought of this scene nearly every day for the last nine years and eleven months. That was the last time that we laughed together.

I did not see Njue for some days that week and was not alarmed at all because I knew that I would probably see him the next week. I was doing some cleaning in my house on that weekend when I chanced upon the book that I happened to have picked from Njue, the one with nine maggots on the cover. I flipped through the pages, feeling apprehensive at the idea of my own body rotting. It sounded too disgusting for my liking and unreal. How could a body as strong and clean as mine turn into whatever I read described on those pages? I shivered in disgust once again and shut the book, placing it on my table and intending to return it to him that afternoon as I checked if he was back.

I do not remember much of how the afternoon went but I remember catching the stench of putrefaction as I knocked on his door. Everything was a blur as I soon realized that I had become Njue in the story he told me by the stairs.

As I lie in this room, losing strength, I cannot help but wonder what would have happened had I registered it alarming that I had not seen Njue earlier. Perhaps I would have prevented it all. I am sinking deeper into my sorry state and there is desire in my brain and eyes. It is at the back of my head too, eating me up from within like a cadaver in an empty plain, within the long grass and unseen. In my delirious state, I suddenly desire to know what life is made of. I have always avoided abstract concepts and so I am experiencing something novel.

What colour does blood turn to when it rots?

You see, I still do not have the answer to his question. I refused to look at his corpse because that would make it true. I only saw the stained sheets that he had laid on during his last moments but it had not been blood that had stained them. I chose not to face the testament to his death and instead unflinchingly bundled up the bedsheets and threw them out into the passing sewage once the police left with his body.

Now, I think of Njue as I lie on my mattress. Nearly a decade later, I feel angry that he made his choice. I think of how I am now at eternity's gate myself, bursting with dissonance from within. I try to pray but I find humor in the fact that my vision is blurring with tears. It is as if crying for a god will set me free. I am wondering whether trephining my skull and opening it up will do anything to help me. Maybe the mortician will do that to me once my heart stops beating. I cannot stop thinking of how the grey matter will contrast with the blood in my head during my post-mortem exam. I might probably rot before I am found but I cannot stop imagining this great pressure in my head being released. Perhaps my brain will breathe, then the agony of memory will cease to fight me once that happens.

And so, to die today or to go to the market?

-

Natasha W. Muhanji often writes about human emotion and the absurdities of life's experiences to varying degrees. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming on The Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, WSA-K Magazine, Sxynergy Collective, WhoWhatWhere KE and the first edition of the Qwani Anthology among others. She received the East Africa Sondeka Awards 2023 Short Stories Prize and besides that, she is currently a recipient of the 2024 Writers Space Africa (WSA) Creative Writing Academy Scholarship. When she is not reading or writing, you will find her on Discord, gaming with her friends.

To communicate with the writer:

Email: bibliophilicmistress@gmail.com

-

Photo by K