The Murder of Onesmus Muriuki

By Njoki Kamau

Onesmus Muriuki is a prosperous, hard-working, hard-living man. He lives his life on the edge. Never satisfied with what is legally his, he likes reaching over the fence and grabbing his neighbors possessions.
Leaving a swathe of adultery, fraud and broken hearts in his wake, Onesmus is on a knifes edge as his list of enemies grows by the day.
The clock is ticking. His doom is about to fall upon him by the hand of one of his victims.
Will it be Kevin, the young man whose girlfriend has fallen under Onesmuss spell? Or could it be James Munene, Onesmuss business partner, whom he has been shamelessly robbing in broad daylight?
The butterflys wings have flapped, and the hurricane is gathering strength and momentum. Onesmuss days are numbered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496998293

Njoki Kamau

Njoki Kamau was born in Nairobi, Kenya. She is a great lover of literature. Her writing career started late, and this is her second book. She currently lives in Wales, United Kingdom. E-mail: [e-mail]

Book preview

I’m going to die

Onesmus walked through the crowded living room, feeling rather more unsettled than he expected. The young man’s attack plus the accusing look in his eyes had ruffled his feathers. He had laughed it all off, but deep down, he felt sorry for him.

To top it all, there had been a look in the girl’s eyes, a reminder of something painful, long forgotten and buried in his subconscious. For some reason, she had reminded him of his mother. Onesmus felt momentarily vulnerable, a feeling which he had long since taught himself to subjugate and stamp out of his heart with ruthless cynicism.

The living room was too noisy, close and hot. He needed some air, a few minutes to compose himself. Ignoring his host, who was gesturing to him from the dining room door, he hurried through and out towards the back door.

As he stepped outside he heaved a great sigh and drew in a deep breath. How strange, he thought, to be so discomposed by that spineless chips-eater and his stupid girl friend!

He couldn’t understand why that should be so. That wide-eyed look of ingenuous hurt, he felt, was just a show for her boyfriend’s benefit. After all, he had witnessed a totally different look on her face on numerous occasions in the past. Oh, yes, Mamie. I know all about it.

Shrugging, he took a step further away from the door and felt someone at his shoulder. Surprised, he turned quickly around, almost expecting another attack.

As his eyes landed on the man’s face he felt a fleeting sense of relief. The next moment a prickle of apprehension crept up his spine as he met the intense and unfriendly eyes staring back at him.

Bwana Muriuki, I would like a word with you! The man said. His voice was low and tight, the voice of someone suffering from a strong emotion, barely suppressed.

Onesmus nodded and stepped onto the grass. The man followed, keeping close to his side as though to prevent him from running away. Onesmus was on high alert. Obviously the man knew. He wasn’t going to waste his time wondering how he’d found out. Maybe his wife had confessed. Onesmus doubted that, somehow.

I just wanted to know why. The man said, steering the way towards a dark spot near the shed.

The same place where Onesmus had been standing just a short time ago with the girl.

Onesmus felt a smile coming over his face, but quickly suppressed it. The man had obviously been watching too many American movies. This dramatic kind of talk was typical of a certain generation. Onesmus was suddenly sure that he would have to fight the aggrieved cuckold. It no longer mattered that he was in someone else’s garden, a respected guest at the house-warming party for a house he had built.

The lad had been no match for him physically, but this man, with his purple shirt and short styled hair, was definitely a more worthy opponent. There was meat here to be had, so to speak.

A fiercely keen sense of anticipation, like the blood thirst of a Masai moran about to kill a lion, coursed through him as he faced his adversary, adrenalin already pumping through his veins.

What do you mean, why? Why what? He goaded his prey, lips coming off his teeth in a death’s mask grin. I’m going to enjoy this, he thought, looking swiftly round the garden. There was no-one else in sight. The party noise came faintly through the walls of the house, like the subdued roar from an underground waterfall.

Onesmus turned his gaze back on the man, and noticed that his face was working uncontrollably. He wondered if he was going to burst into tears and felt a swift shaft of frustration. Huh, he’s just another wimp, trying to talk me into leaving his wife alone, he thought.

An unexpected pang smote him as the word ‘wife’ passed through his brain. Wife. Philomena. She was on his mind, like a constant, niggling pain. She had changed. She no longer had that adoring look in her eyes that he had for so long come to expect, and take for granted. He could almost pin-point the day that she stopped – loving him. Two months and five days. He came home, on a warm and sunny day, and she had left him - spiritually, emotionally. Left him. The pain was like a red-hot iron searing his heart, concentrating his anger on this man standing in front of him. Onesmus felt the muscles in his arms flex and pump. He could easily tear him limb from limb, and wring out his intestines in the running stream. He waited.

With a great effort, the man got a hold of his emotions, rubbing his hand once down his face.

As he did so Onesmus was distracted by a sound. There was a noise from the shed, and it was not coming from the goats. He listened harder and heard it again, a childish girl’s voice, raised in annoyance. He wondered who could be in there.

The man was speaking again, recalling him to the present.

Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know you’ve been sleeping with my wife. Yes, you’ve been sneaking behind my back, coming to my house when I’m at work. Tell me, why? Why would you do such a thing? What have I ever done to you?

The man had worked himself up into a terrible state. Spit flew with every bitter word he pushed out of his mouth, and pain had etched deep furrows where before all was smooth and pleasant. A single, swollen vein throbbed visibly in the middle of his creased forehead.

Onesmus’s eyes turned cold with contempt. A great sneer was on his face and in his voice as he answered.

Why, he asks! Who knows? Maybe because I enjoy it, hmm? He said, and reaching out, chucked the man on his wet chin with a contemptuous fore-finger.

"You obviously have not been satisfying your wife, jamba!" he added.

He was suddenly bored and fed up. These modern men, all they do is eat chips and wear fancy shirts and play video games, he thought, turning away. He wanted to go to the shed and find out which child, or children, were playing in there. His curiosity was getting stronger by the minute. He could still hear them talking, above the crying man’s huffing breath and the subdued noise from the house.

A strangled cry of rage made him turn. Too late he saw the man’s arm coming down towards his head, and felt the devastating blow. Stunned, he fell to his knees, thinking: haiya, the sneaky bastard was concealing a weapon all along!

He tried to push himself up, and was surprised to find that he couldn’t. The ground under his feet was wet and slippery.

As he raised his head to look for the man, another blow landed on the side of his head. Onesmus collapsed onto his face, and a thought flashed through his brain: I’m going to die.

Suddenly, he saw himself at twelve years of age, standing in a darkened room, facing his father.

Where is my mother? His voice is high and almost girly, but there are already cracks in the high notes.

The old man turns and glares at him with a look of unbelievable hatred. Your mother is a whore. A malaya. She’s gone!

A white light exploded before his eyes as a third blow landed on the top of his cranium, shattering skin and bone, exposing white brain matter. His body jack-knifed with the force of the blow, leapt into the air and landed on its back, legs splashing loudly into the silent stream.

Mum! He screams, but no sound leaves his lips, for his days of screaming, of crying, of begging for forgiveness or comfort, are already long gone.

His eyes turn up towards the bright light of the moon, staring with surprise and disbelief, as his murderer walks swiftly away.

The flying insects, momentarily disturbed by the falling body, settle back down on grass and above the water, their wings visible as darting, minute reflections of the cold light of the moon.

The flap of a wing

When a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it can cause a hurricane in another part of the world. This quote by an unknown author can be applied to many of life’s situation, but more so when a human being meets a violent and untimely death.

After all, although we often times tend not to acknowledge the fact, life is made up of small, seemingly insignificant events, which ultimately lead on to the things that make headline news. We then imagine that these events, tragic and unbelievable as some of them are, just happened out of the blue, without cause or starting point, while the fact of the matter is, everything starts off with something as light and insignificant as the flap of a butterfly’s wings.

Having said that, it is almost impossible to pin-point with any accuracy when, or where, the wings first flapped, so to speak. Behind the obvious and the reported information, all is chaos and confusion. Yet this chaos is carefully controlled by powers beyond all human understanding.

In Onesmus’s case, it would be easy to say that he startled the butterfly into flight himself. He precipitated the shifting of the sand that led to the avalanche that ultimately put an end to his life.

Onesmus was, after all, nobody’s saint. He was grasping, avaricious, a serial womanizer, and apparently, totally without shame. He took no heed of people’s feelings – indeed it was doubtful whether he was even aware that people were capable of real, deep, heart-felt emotions. Things like love and romance, loyalty and trust, were all foreign concepts to him. He would have regarded as an affliction the deep romantic love which renders some men incapable of the basic life functions such as eating or sleeping while they are separated from the object of their affection. Onesmus took what he could out of the great cauldron of life, and laughed at those who were too slow to take advantage of their situation.

On the other hand, it could be that after all, Onesmus felt things too deeply, was too much affected by things that happened around him. As a consequence, to safe-guard himself from losing his mind with grief and pain, he had simply closed the windows and doors to his heart; had shut his soul, safe but cold and lonely, away for good.

A human being’s life is the hardest to unravel. It is hard to tell which significant event has the most devastating effect on personality that might ultimately, determine his fate.

To save ourselves the trouble, we go with the obvious, and most times, it is usually, actually, enough. Nobody wants to know by which path we arrive at our destination. The important thing, in the end, is to know that we have arrived.

Still, I feel that Onesmus’s story needs to be told as truthfully and objectively as possible, so that others may decide for themselves whether he deserves condemnation, or perhaps, absolution.

There were different facets of the man’s personality which he displayed selectively to different people in the course of his life. To some, indeed, he was a demon, but there were a few here and there who would have sworn that Onesmus was kind, humorous - indeed, a model to be emulated by the young and a leading light amongst his age-mates.

Onesmus was fifty five years old when the cruel hand of death snatched him from this mortal coil.

He was of an average height, around five foot nine or ten. He had a large head with hair always cut short, a stocky torso which seemed a bit long in comparison to his legs, large but strong and capable hands, and powerful legs and arms.

Onesmus’s face was rather on the square side, and his heavy eyebrows gave his eyes a deep-set look. His nose was large and a bit flared around the nostrils, and his mouth was well-shaped, the lips lopsided in an indefinable but not too objectionable way on the right side. His teeth were large, even, and strong, the teeth of a man who has never had a problem chewing hard maize, meat or sugarcane: the teeth of a man, too, for whom meat and milk have consistently been available and present in his diet.

Whenever he threw his big head back and laughed out loud, one would be struck first by the power of his voice, and second, by the business-like functionality of his teeth, which seemed to challenge the beholder by their evident strength and capability.

As a man, he was all that could be desirable to a woman, and his wife certainly adored the ground that he walked, or rather strutted, on. He had a confident, heavy stride that compelled weaker men to give way on crowded pavements, and a loud commanding voice which he loved to use with liberal regularity at work, at home, and in crowded rooms.

His deep voice was the first thing one noticed about Onesmus, and the quick way in which he delivered his words stayed with his auditor and was remembered long after. He could make his voice sound angry, happy, tender or cruel as the occasion demanded, but the commanding tone was his fall back option most times.

The women in his life were more used to the rumbling, tender tones with which he charmed them into his bed. Those who had to be got rid of, however, never forgot the dismissive and contemptuous tone with which he killed their romantic aspirations, either on the phone or in person.

The only woman who had never heard this latter tone of voice was his wife, Philomena Wangarì, whose further acquaintance my reader will be pleased to make very shortly.

Besides his wife, Onesmus had really no time for women except as playthings to be used and discarded at will. The thought of doing any serious business with a member of the opposite sex, a ‘mundu wa nja’, was almost enough to bring him out in a cold sweat. To his mind, women had no business trying to compete with men in the work place.

In his construction business, he had been known to turn down contracts if the person requesting the work was a woman, with no husband or father in sight for him to consult with.

Onesmus was a building contractor, in partnership with his life-long friend, James Munene. Their company, Muriuki and Munene Architects and Building Contractors, was just cresting the rise into the big league when Onesmus met his Waterloo.

Onesmus was a real man’s man. In his presence, other men were wont to walk straighter, look more serious, and try to inject a deeper and more knowledgeable tone into their conversation. Young men and boys looked up to him as an ideal figure of a man, someone to be emulated and respected, if not feared. His partner, James Munene, a quiet, mild, unassuming man, always acceded to Onesmus’s wishes in all aspects of business, although he, Munene, was the more educated of the two. Indeed, to all intents and purposes, he was the only educated one, Onesmus having dropped out of school at the age of fourteen years.

Onesmus Mungai Muriuki was born in a small, semi-rural village tucked into a green valley on the border between Nairobi and Limuru, known as Maumire. This is where he lived all his life. The village population was less than three hundred at the time of his birth, but had grown by leaps and bounds over recent times. It now boasted a main street, albeit a very mean one with a few small shops, a bar, a hairdressers, a barber’s shop, and the obligatory row or two of wooden slum dwellings, dust-blown and ugly, just behind the shops, and running down the main street to the turn-off which led to the Maumire Church of God, next to Maumire primary school.

Onesmus’s home was on the southern end of the village, the lane leading to the home branching off the main village street between the bar and the biggest grocery shop. In the early days, before his father sold off a chunk of his ten acre farm to build his rental houses, the lane led straight to the main gate to their home, and there was no other building in sight for quite some way.

At the period of which we are speaking, however, the area was quickly being built up, new buildings coming up all over the place as more and more people, squeezed out of the rental markets nearer to the city centre, moved into Maumire and other villages nearby.

The village high street had recently evolved into a concrete jungle, buildings sprouting up and jostling each other for space, their glass windows glaring defiance and triumph over the still existing wood and iron roof buildings of the original inhabitants of the area.

The name of the village, Maumire, was a source of much speculation, since few people could remember when or why it had been coined. That it was no older than the period just before independence was not in doubt. Beyond that, there were quite a few theories as to what had prompted the name, which in Kikuyu, means, literally, they came out.

Onesmus’s father, Muriuki, once told his son that the name was connected to an incident that happened during the height of the Mau Mau rebellion.

According to him, some villagers had hidden a few Mau Mau fighters in their huts in the mihari built by the white man to keep the residents in one place. These huts, some of which still survive up and down the land to this day, were built in rows out of iron sheets, with a deep trench all around to keep the villagers in and unwanted visitors – mainly freedom fighters – out. The huts were tiny, and there was very little space inside for concealing a grown man, let alone a few. The villagers had, however, had no choice. The Mau Mau fighters, having taken an oath to fight to the death, would creep into the village in the dead of night and demand to be given food and sometimes shelter on pain of death. The villagers were caught between two opposing and blood thirsty foes.

In the morning, the home guards and their white masters would come into the village and call everyone out for a head count. On that day, the white men were very angry. A home guard had been killed while guarding one of the paths into the village, and there was a suspicion that the villagers had aided the Mau Mau. As the old men, women and children – the only inhabitants of the mihari – came running out, the guards set the children aside, and the grown-ups were forced to run round and round in a circle while the guards beat them with sticks and whips.

As their cries and screams rent the air, the hidden warriors could not bear to listen to the torture any more. Enraged, they ran out of the huts and confronted the guards. At the end of the fight, three villagers and the three freedom fighters lay dead, while only one home guard was badly wounded.

The word Maumire referred to the fact that the warriors came out of hiding, knowing that they would be killed, but nevertheless willing to sacrifice their lives to save their people and their land.

As far as Onesmus was concerned, that was the most fitting explanation for the name of his village. The name appealed to his idea of chivalry and honour. What the three freedom fighters did was something he could see himself doing. Onesmus had a great sense of community and was known as a man who would defend the weak and the helpless whenever he could.

Onesmus was the third born of four children, and his early childhood was very happy. His father was an upstanding and respected member of the community, and his children were always held up in the village primary school as hard working, respectful and intelligent. His mother was beautiful, fun and clever, and very affectionate especially towards Onesmus, who was her ‘father’, having been named after his maternal grandfather.

The home was well ordered, with a nice fence overgrown with pink and red bourganville, the footpaths and driveway cleared and laid with fine gavel. The family house was raised with bricks and finished off with timber, the glass windows reinforced with painted iron frames to keep out the thieves. The front of the house had a nice overhanging porch and two sweeping wide steps led up towards the front door. Inside, the large living room - Onesmus’s mother’s pride and joy - was furnished with plush sofas in deep red velvet. The coffee table was draped in a beautifully crocheted cover, as indeed were the backs of the sofas, the television stand, and the wooden stools.

On the walls were rows of family photos in various groups and poses, the biggest of which was the parent’s wedding photo, in black and white, taken in a photographic studio in the early seventies.

In the farthest wall on the right hand side of the door was a wooden dresser in the middle and largest shelves of which were displayed the television and Muriuki senior’s old record player. Behind the glass doors on both sides of the dresser were rows of glasses, cups and plates, which usually only came out when there were visitors.

The family home had slowly evolved over the years, as had most people’s houses in the neighbourhood. In the early days, when Muriuki Senior first invited his beautiful young bride Rebekah into his house, the floors were bare of any cement or other special flooring, being as mother nature had intended, i.e hard earthen floors, stamped down, dampened and swept clean of dirt and debris. The walls had been built of rough-hewn timber from top to bottom, and the house had consisted of only two rooms, the front room and the bedroom.

The kitchen then was a separate hut which Rebekah shared with her mother in law, and the only fire the traditional three stone, fire-wood burning affair in the middle of the hut. This was way before Onesmus was born, in the mid-fifties.

By the early eighties, the kitchen hut was gone, the house was a three bedroom affair with a single gas hob in the kitchen and a charcoal stove in the chimney.

Muriuki Senior had done well for himself, and the family home reflected his prosperity. His grade cows gave milk by the gallon, the vegetable garden and maize and bean crops were the great pride and joy of his wife, but over and above all that, he had wisely invested in rental rooms built on the two acres of his six acre farm bordering the main village road.

He therefore had a regular and comfortable income coming into his hands every end of month, and his family reflected that prosperity, in their speech, in their clothes, and in the bloom upon the children’s cheeks.

This was the state of things in Onesmus’s early years, but then something happened to blight his so far enchanted existence.

When Onesmus was twelve years old, his mother, Rebekah Muriuki, ran away with an Italian missionary who had been sent to her parish from Rome to widen the Catholic influence in the area. The Italian, by the name of Rodriguez, abandoned his cloth, and carried her off to the slopes of the Rift Valley, where they soon built themselves a home and started a brand new family.

At thirty five, Rebekah Muriuki was slim, had an inimical sense of style, and was a leading light among the village women. Her first born was sixteen years old, and her last born was six. She had a great sense of humor, was very friendly and outgoing, and a social climber. She was always looking out for new interests, new innovations even around the home, and new pursuits. She was very active in the church and was popular with everyone.

Some years earlier, she had found herself unable to bear the strict and pervasive church doctrine as preached by Reverend Muthomi, the head of Maumire Presbyterian church, and his ilk. She felt that, having agreed to serve God and do his works, she should be allowed to live the rest of her life as she liked, within reason.

For years, she had been chafing under the Reverend’s domination, and used to complain bitterly to her husband and close friends about it. What, she wondered, could be wrong with combing out her hair, which was luxuriously long, black and beautiful, when going to church on a Sunday? Where in the bible did it say that Christian women have to cover their heads and powder their faces and feet with ash to show their piety? She liked to wear nice fashionable clothes. She had the figure for it, and she could afford it as well.

When the church women started wearing long, shapeless dresses to go to church, and the Reverend started fulminating about make-up and nail varnish, she finally decided enough was enough, and joined the Catholic church.

Her husband was more than happy to go along with her change of denomination. He liked to enjoy a little alcoholic beverage of an evening, and the Reverend’s hard line stance against all drink had been with him a sore point. On quite a few occasions, he had had to hide his glass under his chair when the minister came calling unexpectedly.

Later, he had good reason to bitterly rue his easy-going and unquestioning faith in his wife’s judgment, and to wish that he and his family had stayed under the guidance and protection of the fiery Reverend’s doctrine.

The Italian missionary fell in love with Rebekah almost at first sight. He was fifty five years old, and terribly excited to find himself in a strange land among such happy, outgoing and friendly people. He wanted to immerse himself in their lives, in their land, in their love. He threw off the yokes of his Catholic faith, and grabbed his chance.

As a young boy Onesmus adored his mother. The second son in his family, he had been named after her father, and she, his pretty, kind and loving mother, had made much of this fact, and spoilt him shamelessly. He was a real mummy’s boy, and reveled in her love, every smile, every kiss, every cuddle from her was the stuff of life to him. He would have done anything for her.

He was in boarding school, in form one, when his mother left. He was doing very well. He had passed his primary exams with flying colours, and his parents had