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I wake in the middle of the night, my heart pounding. I am in the grip of a memory so strong that it bleeds its panic out of the dream into my waking. As a child, I learned not to think about it, to control it, but Africa is unraveling the past, and now it has come back, hot and alive, to haunt me. I go to the bathroom, draw water from the tap and splash my face until my skin is hard and cold as stone, but when I climb back into bed the memory still sticks to me. The squealing of the pigs in the truck has awakened it. I squeeze my eyes shut but it follows me into the darkness; there is no holding it back.
IT IS 6 SEPTEMBER 1946. I know the date because I have been counting the days on the calendar until my parents come home. I am twelve years old, staying with my uncle Eliot-my father’s brother-in his house at the meat factory near Limuru. There is a strike on and my uncle-instead of sitting down to lunch with me in the quiet of the dining room-is up at the factory. I am sprawled on the newly cut floorboards, sharply aromatic, reading an encyclopedia, with Juno, my puppy, snapping at flies and making small charges at my hair. My parents are in England-this is their first trip away from Kisima. My uncle is not married, and he is awkward with children-I am unsure how to behave in his company. The days are long and quiet, but I am happy to be left alone.
The managers’ cottages are built at the back of the factory, far enough away that you can almost, but not quite, forget it is there. The slaughterhouse is open every day but Sunday, and it processes nearly twenty-six thousand pigs a year. I take a pencil and a bit of paper and do the calculation. Close to a hundred pigs a day. From Monday to Saturday the metal machinery grinds on, and it is difficult not to think about the steady stream of animals being butchered just a few hundred yards away.
When I arrived at the factory, my uncle took me onto the killing floor. I stood transfixed, the smell of warm blood, of wet metal in my mouth, the clanging of machinery roaring in my ears. I couldn’t tear my eyes away-the long line of pigs toiling up the chute, heads down in protest; pressed inexorably forward by the steel paddle; the turning of the great metal wheel; the pig jerked off its feet, so that it hung upside down, screeching, until it was carried within reach of the African with the knife; the silence that came with a long gush of blood. I wanted to leave, but he kept me there, talking. “Much more efficient than a man with a knife at the back of his shop,” but all I could hear was the squealing.
My uncle has mechanized the process as far as he is able-within minutes the pigs are boiled, scraped, burned to remove hair, gutted, beheaded and cut into two halves-but they can’t be silenced. Death is still death.
Nothing is wasted-the livers, hearts and glands are sold, intestines are cleaned and salted and used as sausage skins. The backbones and pig heads-still with some fresh meat on them-are sold to the Africans for food. “We use everything but the squeals,” my uncle says with pride. When the wind blows in the wrong direction the stench from the rendering house lines the back of your throat and makes you choke. That is where they tank the scraps-huge vats of blood, gristle and bones, boiled down and the fat pumped off to make soap, glue and fertilizer. I have never been in-no visitors are allowed-but when the fires are burning the smell of rot hangs like a pall over the cottages.
Today the strike has shut down the machines-the Africans have put down their knives and aprons-and everything is as quiet as a Sunday. My uncle left breakfast in a hurry, expressly forbidding me to go up to the factory, and I am on my own as I am most days, listening to the hornbill rapping at the window and the rhythmic slice of the gardener’s blades as he shears the grass outside.
Juno pricks up her ears, listening for something, letting out a low, purring growl, and I laugh at her earnestness, ruffling her coat with my hand. I found her on the farm two months ago and took her in, and I was happy when my uncle agreed to let me bring her to the factory. She is a squirming ball of warm fur with needle-sharp teeth and sleek oversized ears; all gold, with three black paws, and a ripple of fur down her back like my parents’ lion dogs.
Now she growls and scrambles, slipping across the floorboards to the door before I even hear the car pull up. Then I hear the crunch of tires and the engine cuts. Through the open door I can see a man stepping out of the car.
“Miss Fullsmith?” he asks as I pad out onto the porch, unsticking my dress from my legs and blinking in the hot sun. He licks his lips, dry in the heat, and looks up at me.
“Rachel Fullsmith?”
I nod.
Juno is teasing his trousers, and he kicks her off irritably so that she slides across the floorboards, yelping. I scoop her off the steps, her back legs windmilling beneath her, her teeth gnawing at my hand.
“My uncle’s at the factory,” I say, tilting my head back down the road, in the direction he has come. The engine of the car is ticking over in the heat, the air settling thick and dusty around us. I am standing in a patch of sunlight, the boards hot beneath the soles of my feet so that I have to keep shifting my weight, lifting one bare foot then the other. He gives a slight nod, which is disconcerting. Visitors usually mean news, and news is something reserved for adults, but he doesn’t look about to leave.
“I’ve come from Nairobi,” he says, not really talking to me, but looking at me curiously, and suddenly-in a gulping moment of unease-I know that whatever he is here for is something to do with me. “Your father,” he says, stepping onto the porch, pulling a small yellow envelope from the pocket of his trousers. It is stuck to a packet of cigarettes and he unpeels it. “A telegram. I was hoping to find your uncle. You’ll give it to him? Best to wait until he’s home.” His gaze slips up my bare legs, and I smell his warm breath, faintly mentholated, as he hands it over. Then he walks back to his car and drives off in a rattle of dust.
I slip the telegram into my pocket, slide on my plimsolls, shut the door on Juno who is scrambling at my feet and run up to the factory to find my uncle.
I remember the strike again when I come up to the pigpens. I can see-looking under the barn roves-that the pens are full to bursting. Usually the pigs are content and placid for the time they are kept here, nosing and rolling in the dusty earth, strangely resigned to the sudden change in their circumstances, and I would lean over the rail, the metal bar hot against the thin cotton waist of my dress, and lay a hand on the coarse bristled skin of the nearest, soaking up the feel of the warm, rolling firmness of its back beneath my hand. But today they are jammed in so tight that heads are lifted onto the buttocks of the ones in front, pink, brown and black packed in so close you can’t tell one pig from another.
There is a noise coming from the yard beyond the walls, an undercurrent of voices which rises up above the grunting of the pigs; a group of men protesting, their shouts lifting on a tide of anger. I think of the knives each man carries at the factory, the long blades used for cutting through muscle, fat and bone. What if they haven’t put them down after all?
The whole place feels out of kilter, as if anything might happen. I stand beside the pigpens, under the hot sun, pushing my sweating palms against the cotton of my dress, wondering what to do. I know I shouldn’t be at the factory, but I don’t want to leave just yet-I need to see what is happening in the yard.
I run through the barn, between the pens-hot with the smell of pigs, until I reach the factory wall. I am careful not to be seen-my uncle will be angry with me if he finds out. There is a door-usually left open for the managers in the engine room, along the corridor, to get a breath of air. It is heavy on its hinges, and swings open silently when I pull on it. I step inside a cool, dark corridor. It is quiet inside, and there are no lights on. At the end there is a square of sunlight on the cement floor: the stairwell.
I pad up the concrete steps into the light, crouching down as I come out onto a balcony on the first floor, emerging into a swell of noise. I slide forward on my belly so that I can see through one of the round drain holes in the wall. It gives me a circular view of what is going on below, without the risk of being seen.
I am overlooking the courtyard of the main factory. The workers aren’t carrying their knives-a relief-but some carry large stones in their hands. They sweat and shout in the heat, hemmed in like the pigs outside. They look stronger and less knowable without their brown tunics and white aprons. My heart thuds with a sudden fear. I have never seen so many men, so many Africans, brought together by anger. Their faces are taut, and a few of them cry out in defiance.
An idea-absurd but compelling-grips me. What if the Africans rise up and in their anger herd us through the killing line, to be stunned, strung up and butchered? They far outnumber the group of European managers and their askari who stand in a cluster by the far wall. My uncle is standing with them, his posture rigid. I turn, hearing a noise behind me. Voices in the stairwell and the flat tread of feet coming up the stairs. A heart-racing terror-I don’t want to be found up here, on my own. There is an open door a few yards away. An office-empty. I dart inside and pull the door shut. All I can hear for a long moment is the milling of voices from the factory yard, but then-with a freezing of my spine-the door handle turns. I look round the room in desperation, my eyes still adjusting to the dark. Should I stand up and declare myself? There is a cupboard in the corner. I open the slatted door and before I know what I am doing I am folding myself inside, next to a bucket and a box of files, and I am pulling the door closed. The telegram folds stiffly in my pocket.
A European officer walks in, dressed in a khaki shirt, followed by two askari in uniform, with rifles over their backs and revolvers in their belts. I can see them through the slats. They push an African into the room in front of them, so hard that he falls forward onto the metal desk. Its feet screech across the floor and I flinch. He is a slight man, wearing leather shoes, a ripped collared shirt and trousers; he looks like an African from Nairobi. The officer barks a command and the door swings shut. My heart thuds in my chest. It is too late to do anything other than stay quiet.
The European officer isn’t tall but he is bulky, not quite fat but fleshy as a fruit might be when overripe, and his thin blond hair is combed down into a side parting. He is looking at the African in dismay, shaking his head from side to side in a demonstration of disappointment.
“So, you’re the leader of this circus?” he asks in Swahili, sitting with half his weight on the desk. He speaks with a casualness that borders on disinterest.
“ Ndiyo ,” the man says, yes , pushing himself upright and brushing his hands slowly on his trousers.
The officer lights a cigarette, inhales, and says as he blows out, “And what the fuck are you kaffirs hoping to achieve here?”
The African has a piece of paper crushed in his palm, and he straightens it and hands it to the officer. The officer doesn’t move, doesn’t take it, just keeps on staring at the striker and smoking his cigarette. I have the impression of certain teachers at school, who accelerated the will of my rebellion with their implacable refusal to acknowledge my point of view.
The African steps forward, folds the piece of paper into a square and pushes it into the officer’s shirt pocket. Then he leans forward-so close that I imagine the wash of his warm breath on the officer’s mouth-and says, in perfect English, “Kenya is a black man’s country. You should go back to where you belong.”
The officer doesn’t flinch. He takes one last, slow drag on his cigarette, gives the African a slight smile, drops the cigarette to the floor and grinds it out with the toe of his heavy black boot. Then he pulls the revolver out of his belt, walks around behind the man and slams him on the back of the neck with the gun so that he collapses onto the floor.
When the striker tries to stand up the officer lifts his gun and smashes him in the face. Blood explodes. I shut my eyes. When I open them again the man is on the floor, curled up, sweeping his feet along the cement in an attempt to slide away. The officer pauses for a moment, takes a few dancing steps on the floor to line himself up, then swings his boot at the man’s head, under his chin, so that his neck snaps back. After that the man doesn’t move.
I swallow heavily. A trickle of sweat runs down between my eyebrows. I have to make a conscious effort not to scream. The officer hands the gun to his askari , pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wipes down his hands, his face and his shirt. “Fucking kaffirs,” he says as he walks out, slipping his gun back into his belt. Then-in Swahili-“Leave him here-we’ll go deal with the others. There won’t be any shauri now.”
And they walk out of the room, closing the door behind them with a click.