In the House of the Interpreter Read Free Page A

initials AHS and merged into a khaki uniformity, as everyone trooped to the parade ground, which turned out to be the same place we had disembarked on the first day. This fact did not dim the light of its wondrous newness: it may have been an empty
muram
surface, but I would soon learn it was one of the most important spots in the entire school, the site of a daily performance of power.
    We stood in lines in the order of our houses, and within each house according to our heights, the tallest in the back. We faced a tall pole with a rope loosely hanging down its side. The senior prefects stood in front of their houses, the house masters a few steps ahead, facing us. The other teachers stood in groups of twos and threes, nonchalant spectators. I had never seen so many white teachers, and my eyes fell on the four black teachers, points of identification.
    Suddenly Moses Gathere shouted: Attention. Members of Livingstone responded immediately. Appearing apparently from nowhere, the acting principal, James Stephen Smith, and the school captain, Manasseh Kegode, began their inspection, trailed close behind by the house master and the house prefect. Smith walked along the lines, stoppingin front of each boy and examining his clothes, bare feet (shoes were for Saturdays and Sundays only), and hair, deducting points for every instance of discernible untidiness. I thought that I had combed my hair thoroughly, but Smith picked on it and deducted some points from Livingstone. Even in my primary schools, my hair had given me trouble. I had gotten into the habit of pulling my hair or running my fingers through it when absorbed in thought, so no matter how thoroughly I combed it, it looked ruffled after an hour. This was not a good beginning, I told myself.
    I was wondering what next, when suddenly I heard sounds of drums, trumpets, and bugles. The band, after a few rounds, stopped by the pole on the raised grass platform in front of us. The entire parade, including the teachers, now stood at attention. Drums purring softly, the drum major walked to the pole in measured steps and attached the folded cloth in his hands to the rope. One of the band boys stepped forward and blew a bugle as the drum major raised the Union Jack. When the flag was finally fluttering in the wind, high up the pole, the assembly sang solemnly:
    God save our gracious Queen,
    Long live our noble Queen,
    God save the Queen!
    Send her victorious,
    Happy and glorious,
    Long to reign over us;
    God save the Queen!
    The words and the tune were new to me, but I mumbled along. I don’t think I noted the irony in my singing thishymn of prayer while my own brother, Good Wallace, was out in the mountains fighting with the Mau Mau guerrillas so that the queen did not reign long over Kenya. *
    After the parade, we trooped to the chapel, a small, steep-gabled building located slightly below one end of the soccer field in a cluster of trees. We took our places in the pews, which held Bibles and hymnbooks,
Songs of Praise
and
Songs of Redemption
. Principal Smith, general inspector of clean bodies, was transformed into a grand inspector of souls. He followed a strict ritual of passages from the Bible and hymns. One hymn caught my attention. Its tone was pleading and fervent, but solemn in its desire:
Wash me, redeemer, and I shall be whiter than snow
.
    After chapel, we ran to the dining hall for a breakfast of porridge, unbuttered slices of bread, and cocoa, which we had been asked to bring with us from home. With body and soul fed, we were now ready for what had brought us here from our different places: the diet of the mind.
    * I’ve narrated my brother’s dramatic escape into the mountains in my earlier memoir,
Dreams in a Time of War
.

5
    The entire school was divided into two streams, A and B. Before I left home, people in Limuru had talked as if I had done better than any other student in Kenya, a homegrown genius. I was surprised to find, then, that twenty otherboys had