Bringing his thoughts back to the present and to the mysterious kissing stranger, Rajan paused by the brazier and warmed his hands absentmindedly. With the return of the lights, the brazier had lost some of its brilliance, but the intensity of the heat had not diminished. The meat was spread on a mesh above the hot coal. A rising blue flame was snuffed by a trickle of blood. A blob of fat followed the route the blood had taken but got caught between two glowing coals. After some moments, the white blob congealed into a black knot, its fatty juice trickling down with a sparkle. The flesh sizzled, its red-pink color turning golden brown. There was a popping sound as a kidney puffed and burst, spewing a splash of fat that ignited a fresh flame that sprinted across the brazier, like a shooting star on a dark night, before it went down in a flicker.
Rajan felt a light wind sweep through. He lifted his eyes and peered at the animals by the watering hole. They, too, had lifted their ears, listening for threats to their lives. The carcasses of the animals that had been killed for the day’s meat nudged back to life, doing their upside-down dance at the butchery, attracting a fresh lease of interest from revelers. The sizzling of the meat and the heaving of the coals melded into the din of the night: the popping of a frosty, turbaned bottle losing its top, the clink of toasting glasses, the loosening of belts, the murmur of drunken men and women seducing one another.
Music came to the fore as someone bellowed: “Next onstage, the Indian Raj, the undisputed king of mugithi . . . Next onstage . . .”
Although Rajan was scarcely aware of this, he had gone almost full circle. He had combed the entire establishment in his search of the kissing stranger, to no avail. He had almost reached the washrooms again. The sound of the riff and the cheer from the crowd nearly brought him to his knees. There was something utterly overpowering about the music and the energized audience’s response. Somebody called out his name, and the riff sounded once more as the drums throbbed and the guitar wailed.
He was suddenly aware of the pressure on his bladder, which felt like the prick of a thousand needles, drilling a mild, burning sensation. There was even something pleasant about the pain. He shuffled to the urinal and listened to the rhythmic drone as the jet of urine drummed the white bowl, a haze of steam rising lazily in the air.
He felt happy and light as he sprinted backstage without washing his hands, feeling safe in the dim light, now insulated further by the taste of the stranger’s kiss.
He walked up to the microphone onstage and adjusted it to his height. He was small-bodied, like a stunted teen, with a clutch of jet-black hair held at the back by a red, gold, and green hairband. When fans saw him for the first time, they often remarked that fame does not match its owner, for his frame came up short of his towering reputation.
The instruments were building in tempo. Rajan trembled with delight and nodded appreciatively to the instrumentalists, tapping his right foot, responding to a rhythm that appeared to bubble deep inside him.
In his formative years as a singer, Rajan would shake with fright before the curtains opened, unsure how the audience might respond. Sometimes, lines that he had rehearsed for weeks would evaporate at the sight of hundreds of eyes. Now he was a lot more composed, but the dread before performing a show never really left him. It helped when he was under the influence of something. Steam is what they called preconcert intoxication; he’d had a few beers to “unlock” his mind.
Rajan let the instruments play on—the squeak from the keyboard, the wail of the guitar, and the throb of the drums building into a frenzy. He yanked the microphone from its stand and walked to the edge of the platform as dozens of hands rushed to touch him. He crooned in a low, mournful voice:
Barua nakutumia
Nikufunze ya dunia
Usije ukaangamia
Ewe wangu—eeeeeeeeeee!
He shut his eyes and let the music smother his face, now contorted into a mask of pain and pleasure. The air was tense as revelers fell silent. All the sounds from the orchestra were suffused in his small frame, his voice releasing the energy in dribs and drabs. The fans were hypnotized. When he sang the chorus again, the audience joined in, turning the song into a call-and-response, uniting those seated in different sections that once separated the races, building gently before cascading into the main riff.
Rajan fished a pretty girl from the mass of hands that waved excitedly at him. He always picked the most striking girls for this dance, which was a precursor to the gentler dance that followed backstage. The girl wore high heels and ascended the creaky stairs as though she were stepping on eggs. Her skirt was too tight to allow a full stride, which elicited more ululation from the audience. Rajan’s heart somersaulted at the flash of her exposed leg. He stretched his arm and held her dainty hand and pulled her onstage.
The music transitioned smoothly to a faster beat. Rajan turned his back on the pretty girl. She obviously knew the drill; she hoisted her hands on his shoulders. Other fans jumped onstage and lifted their hands onto those ahead of them, and soon the dancing troop had formed a convoy. This was mugithi, the train dance, bringing onstage the stories that Rajan’s grandfather Babu had narrated about his life building the railway.
That night, even as he danced mugithi and led the brigade of old and young alike trooping through the Jakaranda’s uneven and crammed dance floor to imitate the movement of the train, hands on shoulders and thick waists, feet falling with the perfect synchronicity of a centipede tread, his eyes were downcast, looking for the high heels that could only belong to the kissing stranger.
He had kissed many women. Since rising to prominence in Nakuru—the measure of his celebrity being his regular features in the Nakuru Times—female attention had never been in short supply. In fact, so many were on offer that he and Era, his childhood friend and bandmate, had developed codes to distinguish the women: News in Brief was the tag attached to the skimpily dressed; Long-Term Investment was reserved for the big-bodied; Coming Soon referred to the striking young girls about to blossom into womanhood; Takeout meant petite girls who could simply be packed away like a bag of chips.
Many other women, in shapes and sizes that defied codification, would steal backstage and commend Rajan for his singing. He would politely acknowledge their compliments, even when he was inclined to tear away and hide—from the drunks shouting because they were hard of hearing, from older women clinging to vestiges of youth. Or pretty girls with stinking mouths. In the spirit of uhuru, such yardsticks were waived and those wishing to test the limits of their newfound freedom were encouraged to proceed backstage.
It was hardly a backstage, just a tiny enclave where the musical equipment was loaded after every performance, sharing a wall with the butchery. Humans would pile on top of the stacked equipment and try to make a different kind of music, the neon lights flickering outside, the clouds of smoke from the butchery providing enhanced stage effects.
A week before the kissing stranger arrived on the scene, a horsehaired woman had wandered backstage and brayed her affection for Rajan. She tripped over the equipment, while still clinging to her glass of beer. Sprawled on the ground, Rajan had motioned for her to join him, but she was too drunk to lift a leg. Rajan walked over and touched her hair. Her horsehair wig fell off to reveal silly cornrows. He offered a hand and her plastic nails fell off. The false eyelashes dropped off when she cocked her head to look squarely at him. The woman removed her dentures and threw them into her beer glass. When she unhooked her bra, its stiff cups collapsed to reveal shriveled breasts. Rajan had fled and sought Era’s intervention. Era took one look at the woman and said: “Ugly cows belong in the butchery!” And with that, the woman, animal naked, was rolled over to the butchery where Gathenji received her with philosophical gratitude: Ciakorire Wacu mugunda. That might sound like an attempt to redistribute resources, but in those days, the young men called it growing up. They sat and laughed and toasted their green-turbaned bottles the following day, then drank and laughed some more as they narrated the events of the night. They played music and more besotted fans crawled backstage for a repeat performance.
It was remarkable how few words were