Devil on the Cross

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  “As for cars, I have several, from Mercedes Benzes to Range Rovers, from Volvos to Peugeots 604. When I go out hunting young girls, I take my BMW (which stands for Be My Woman), and it’s quite true that if a young woman gets into your BMW, she can never say no! My wife’s shopping basket is a Fiat 1600. But the other day she complained bitterly that a woman with a wicker basket also needs a small sisal basket, so I bought her a Mazda.

  “My children ride horses. They learned to ride at The Nairobi High-Class Riding School, previously owned by Grogan and Delamere. Before Independence, no black man was allowed anywhere near the school compound. You people, to think that some blockheads have the audacity to roam from hotel to hotel saying, ‘Not yet Uhuru’! What other Uhuru do people want? As for me, I am delighted whenever I meet my children on the road or near my home, and I’m driving this car or that, and they’re riding their horses, and they wave at me, and stick out their tongues, and call out, ‘Daddy! Daddy!,’ just like European children! Uhuruuu!

  “All these joys have grown out of modern theft and robbery. Today, for instance, I own several farms in Njoro, Elburgon and Kitale. I pay my workers seventy-five shillings a month, plus a daily ration of flour and a weekly bottle of separated milk. Ha! ha! ha! Do you know what? One day they went on strike, demanding higher wages! I tell you, they all ended up seeing through their mouths instead of their eyes. I dismissed them all on the spot, without notice, and I went into the villages and engaged new hands then and there. Ha! ha! ha! You know, those villages are our granaries for reserve labor! Ha! ha! ha! Why am I laughing so much? Excuse me, let me wipe away these tears of laughter. You’ll laugh too when I tell you that most of the laborers who dig up the grass on my farms are the very people who once took up blunt swords and homemade guns, claiming they were fighting for freedom! And you know, even in those days I never hid anything from them, and I used to tell them my mind: ‘We are lording it over you during the Emergency, and when freedom comes, we shall continue to lord it over you!’ And they used to retort, scornfully: ‘You stop that nonsense! You deserve a bullet through the heart.’ Today I look at some of them when they come to my office for their wages, with their hats off and their hands behind them in deference, and when I recall their taunts, I could die laughing. Ha! ha! ha!

  “But all that’s history now. We all fought for freedom in different ways, for different sides. What’s wrong with the way things are? Let’s all forget the past. All that business of fighting for freedom was just a bad dream, a meaningless nightmare. Let’s join hands to do three things: to grab, to extort money and to confiscate. The Holy Trinity of theft: Grabbing, Extortion, and Confiscation. If you find anything belonging to the masses, don’t leave it behind, for if you don’t look after yourself, who’ll look after you?

  “My success at stealing and robbing has been restricted to the field of smuggling and the black market. Let me explain briefly. I have many sources of expensive stones—pearl, gold, tanzanite—rare animal skins like those of leopards and lions, elephant tusks and rhino teeth, snake poison and many other things, all from the public mines and the game reserves. I export them. I get particularly big orders from Japan, Germany and Hong Kong, orders that reward my effort very nicely. I’ve certainly got no complaints. These deals are only possible because of my partnership with foreigners, who own big hotels and other tourist enterprises. They are experts at handling the Customs, the shipping lines and the airfreight companies; they also have good contacts with receivers overseas. You know, our people don’t imagine that the whites engage in smuggling or play the black market, but I know better, and I have established a lucrative relationship with them. That is why when I see somebody standing here arrogantly demanding that white foreigners should leave our country, I feel like. . . . Oh, I’m going to leave matatũ university degrees out of this!

  “The other commodities that I smuggle overseas and to neighboring countries are salt, sugar, maize, wheat, rice, coffee and tea. Personally speaking, Amin’s departure was a loss. During his rule Uganda coffee brought me in more than 50 million shillings. I also export beef to Arabia and to Europe. I have a special ship at Mombasa, which is always on stand-by.

  “But I’ve got many other shughulis that bring me in money. Sometimes I buy food at harvest time. Ah, but do I buy or do I pick it up off the ground? When famine spreads throughout the land, I sell the food back to the very people who grew it. But is that really selling, or is the word extortion? Gĩtutu wa Gataangũrũ spoke the truth: mass famine is jewelry for the wealthy!

  “Sometimes, when I know Budget Day is near, I try as hard as I can to buy information about the goods that will go up in price from those close to the secret, be they clerks or whoever. I then buy and hoard large quantities of these goods. When the new prices are announced, I flood the market with my goods. Sometimes I buy them in a store and sell them in the same store the following day—for a profit.

  “What’s wrong with this method of accumulating wealth is that you can never be absolutely sure. I remember one year a clerk told me that the prices for both ground and unground pepper would go up. I bought enough of both types of pepper to supply the whole country for over a year. People, I saw through eyes that watered. Instead of the price going up, it went down. I had to burn all the pepper. Today I never want to see or smell any kind of pepper again.

  “Now, all these activities really opened my eyes, and I learned certain truths. Book learning is not as important as Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ was trying to make out. Education is not property. Take me, for instance. I did not complete primary school, and here I am, employing arts graduates as my clerks. And their degrees are the old-style, reliable BAs, not like the ones awarded at Nairobi these days by fellows who think they are highly educated just because they have dropped their precious foreign names and call themselves wa, Ole, Arap, or Wuodh this or that. My girlfriends are all of university or Cambridge standard! So Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ should forget all this hullabaloo about degrees and education. I challenge him to take his degrees to the market for girls (including the market for those European and Asian girls he was bragging about), and I’ll take my BMW (Be My Woman), and we’ll see which of us ends up screwing most girls.

  “I would even say that too much education can be a form of foolishness. For instance, what was Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ telling us just now? That we should spend all our time on rubbish heaps and in scrap yards, collecting old tins to build matatũs? That we should be self-reliant in modern theft and robbery? And where are we going to acquire international experience in the art of stealing? From the rubbish heaps and scrap yards of maintenance technology? Mwĩreri, you must be joking!

  “I can only repeat what has already been said by others: that what’s profitable to us is our partnership with foreigners. Let’s strengthen it. Now, despite the fact that I don’t have any matatũ degrees, I recently had a brilliant idea that could improve the quality of all our propertied lives. But the idea cannot be realized unless foreigners are involved, for it is they who have the knowledge of modern technology. That’s why I wholly agree with those who are always telling the whites to hurry up with the transfer of their technology or to sell us appropriate technology of our own.

  “I would now like to share my brilliant idea with you, so that you’ll see I’m the only man fit to wear the crown of slavery!

  “The idea suddenly came to me one night, as I lay asleep. My heart leaped with joy, and I felt that the secret of a new life for us propertied people had been revealed to me.

  “It was during the visit of Professor Barnard—you know, our Boer friend from South Africa—when he spoke about transplants in the human body. I was present when he talked to the doctors at Kenyatta Hospital. It was then that I was seized again by a worry that has always plagued me.

  “Whenever I, Nditika wa Ngũũnji, contemplate my extraordinary wealth, I ask myself sadly several searching questions. With all my property, what do I have, as a hum
an being, that a worker, or a peasant, or a poor man does not have? I have one mouth, just like the poor; I have one belly, just like the poor; I have one heart, just like the very poor; and I have one . . . er, you know what I mean, just one like the poorest of men.

  “I have enough money and property to supply food for a thousand people, but I am satisfied with one plateful, just like other people. I have enough money to wear a hundred suits at a time, but I can only put on one pair of trousers, one shirt, one jacket, just like other people. I have enough money to buy fifty lives if lives were sold in the market, but I have only one heart and one life, just like other people. I have enough property and money to enable me to make love to ten girls every night, but one girl exhausts me after only one go, and I end up falling asleep without being completely satisfied.

  “So, seeing that I have only one mouth, one belly, one heart, one life and one cock, what’s the difference between the rich and the poor? What’s the point of robbing others?

  “It was revealed to me that night that in this country we should have a factory for manufacturing human parts like mouths, bellies, hearts and so on, spare parts for the human body. This would mean that a rich man who could afford them could have two or three mouths, two bellies, two cocks and two hearts. If the first mouth became tired of chewing, and his belly could hold no more, then the spare mouth and belly could take over. When an old man like me had a sugargirl, instead of falling asleep soon after the first engine had stalled, he would simply start up the other engine and continue with the job in hand, the two engines supporting each another all night long, so that on waking up in the morning he would feel that his heart and body were completely relaxed. We could coin some new sayings: a rich man’s youth never ends. When a man possesses two hearts, he virtually possesses two lives. This would mean that a really rich man would never die. There’s another possible proverb: a rich man never dies. We could purchase immortality with our money and leave death as the prerogative of the poor.

  “I was delighted with that idea. But I made a mistake in telling my wife about it. Too much haste can split the yam. Women have no secrets.

  “At first my wife was very pleased with the idea, and she hugged me, and praised me in English (‘my clever little darling’), and showered me with kisses. She said that if the idea ever bore fruit, it would be wonderful, for it would be possible to distinguish the wife of a man of property from the wives of the poor. These days all women, be they rich or poor, look alike, thanks to the mass production of clothes. But after the factory was built, the wives of the rich would be distinguished from those of the poor by their two mouths, two bellies, two or more hearts and . . . two or more female things.

  “When I heard her mention two female organs and say that she would be able to have two instead of one, I was horrified. I told her quite frankly that I would not mind her having two mouths, or two bellies, or multiples of any other organ of the body. But to have two . . . no, no! I told her to forget all that nonsense. Then she started arguing, and said that if that was to be the case, then I wasn’t going to be allowed two cocks. I asked her bitterly: ‘Why do you want to have two? Tell me: what would you use two for?’ She retorted: ‘Why do you want two? What would you use two for? If you have two, then I must have two. We must have equality of the sexes.’

  “By this time, I was really very angry! I told her to take her equalities to Europe or America. Here we are Africans, and we must practice African culture. I struck her a blow on the face. She started crying. I struck her again. But just as I was about to strike her a third time, she surrendered. She said I could have three, or ten. She would be satisfied with just one.

  “People, think about that vision! Every rich man could have two mouths, two bellies, two cocks, two hearts—and hence two lives! Our money would buy us immortality! We would leave death to the poor! Ha! ha! ha!

  “Bring me the crown. At long last, it has found its rightful owner!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1

  Warĩĩnga could not bear the scene in the cave any longer. The talk sat heavy on her mind, like a log of wood. The breath of the speakers smelled worse than the fart of a badger or of someone who has gorged himself on rotten beans or over-ripe bananas. Nausea swept over her. She excused herself to Gatuĩria and lied that she was going out to answer the call of nature. But what she wanted most was a breath of clean, fresh air.

  Warĩĩnga went around to the back of the cave. She walked across a grass court and slipped through a hedge of roses. Then, on the other side of the hedge, she strolled toward a small bush that marked the beginning of the golf course. Warĩĩnga sat on the grass and leaned against a black wattle tree, breathing a long sigh, as if the load were being lifted from her heart. But the pain remained.

  She regretted having gone back to the cave for the afternoon session. The speeches, the thieves’ attire, their hymns of self-praise, all these things reminded her of the problems she had faced since she became pregnant by the Rich Old Man from Ngorika and gave birth to a baby girl.

  Ah, Wambũi. . . .

  By that time, Warĩĩnga’s parents had emigrated from Kaambũrũ, established a home in Ilmorog and had more children. The burden of looking after Wambũi still fell on Warĩĩnga’s parents. But they had never beaten Warĩĩnga or even criticized her for getting pregnant before marriage or for trying to throw herself in front of a train. On the contrary, they were very hurt by her attempted suicide, and they looked at Warĩĩnga with infinite pity in their eyes. Warĩĩnga was always to remember her mother’s words to her: “Our forefathers said that only a fool sucks at the breasts of his dead mother. Warĩĩnga, do you know how many women yearn for a child of their own without ever having one? A baby is a special gift to a man and woman—even an unmarried woman. To have a child is not a curse, and you must never again think of taking your life because of it.”

  After giving birth to Wambũi, Warĩĩnga continued to burden her parents with requests for money to pay for a correspondence course at the university. She studied at home for a year. She sat her School Certificate exams, but when the results came out, she had only managed to scrape into the fourth division. It was then that she took the secretarial course in Nairobi, after which, having roamed the city streets in search of work, she got the job with the Champion Construction Company from which she was dismissed after rejecting the advances of Boss Kĩhara.

  Leaning against the black wattle tree on the golf course, Warĩĩnga went over the details of all that had happened to her since her dismissal: John Kĩmwana . . . her landlord . . . the Devil’s Angels . . . her aimless wanderings through Nairobi . . . the loss of her handbag . . . the Kaka Hotel bus stop . . . her crazy longing to throw herself under a city bus . . . her rescue by the stranger.

  Where was the stranger now? Why hadn’t he come to the feast?

  Warĩĩnga felt as if all those things had happened to somebody else many years ago. But as she realized that not even two days had passed since then, she suddenly felt ill at ease. In her mind’s eye, she saw her meeting with Gatuĩria, Mũturi, Wangarĩ and Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ the night before. She saw them all riding in Mwaũra’s matatũ, telling one another stories, and their meeting at the cave, like people who had known each other all their lives. As she remembered her talk with Gatuĩria over lunch, she felt her heart lighten a little: where had she found the courage to tell him all about her affair with the Rich Old Man from Ngorika, an affair which she had never mentioned to anybody outside her family?

  The lens in her head showed her the watchman who had rescued her from the wheels of the train. What a coincidence that Mũturi and the watchman were one and the same person! Who was Mũturi? An angel in rags? Could he be the angel who had rescued her from the bus in Nairobi? The one who had given her a fake invitation card?

  No! The lens showed her a close-up of the man who had given her the card. She saw the clothes he was wearing, and she recalled his voice and
words. Warĩĩnga said to herself: Even if the man refused to come to the feast, he still did me a good turn by giving me a card so that I could see this wonder for myself and never try to take my own life again on account of this vile class of men who are determined to oppress the whole land!

  The lens showed her Njeruca—the shelters with cardboard and polythene walls . . . the drains. Then it showed her contrasting images of the Golden Heights—the nice, spacious houses . . . the clean, fresh air. . . . Then it drew her back inside the cave to show her the faces of the seven foreigners, the greedy expressions of the competitors, and again she asked herself: What will happen when Mũturi and his workers and Wangarĩ and the police gather at the cave?

  Warĩĩnga yawned, stretched her arms and leaned back against the tree, feeling drowsy, as if sleep were stealing upon her. But her mind was executing strange drills, as though it had been given license to roam wherever it chose and to do whatever it wanted.

  Warĩĩnga spoke to herself out loud: “Local and international thieves gathered in the same lair, debating ways and means of depriving the whole nation of its rights—that’s a wonder that has never been seen before! That’s like a child planning to rob its mother and inviting others to join in the crime! It has certainly been said that there are two worlds. . . .”

  Before she could complete the thought, Warĩĩnga heard a voice say: “. . . and there is a third, a revolutionary world.”

  2

  Warĩĩnga was startled. She looked about her but could see no one. With sleepy eyes she could make out only the green grass of the golf course as it spread out before her, rolling up and down, losing itself in tiny bushes on the horizon. Warĩĩnga was afraid. She tried to stand up, but she felt tied to the ground and to the tree by invisible wires of fatigue. She gave up the attempt. And suddenly she felt herself completely free of fear, and she said to herself: Come what may, I’m going to stop running away from life’s struggles. With great courage, she asked the invisible voice: “Who are you?”