Devil on the Cross

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  There goes Warĩĩnga! She walks along Ngara Road. She turns into the path that goes past the Shan Cinema, crosses the Nairobi River and walks up through the Grogan Valley. Now she is in River Road, walking toward the garage between Tom Mboya Street and River Road, near Mũnyua Road.

  As Warĩĩnga walks along, people stop to watch her. Her faded blue jeans and khaki shirt and blue waistcoat, also faded, fit her beautifully. And not only these clothes. These days all her clothes fit her perfectly. For today Warĩĩnga has dresses made for her or she buys them ready-made, but they always suit the shape, color and movement of her beautiful body. It’s her own body that now dictates how she’ll dress, and not other people’s figures and taste.

  But it’s not simply her clothes that have made her what she is now.

  Today Warĩĩnga strides along with energy and purpose, her dark eyes radiating the light of an inner courage, the courage and light of someone with firm aims in life—yes, the firmness and the courage and the faith of someone who has achieved something through self-reliance. What’s the use of shuffling along timidly in one’s own country? Warĩĩnga, the black beauty! Warĩĩnga of the mind and hands and body and heart, walking in rhythmic harmony on life’s journey! Warĩĩnga, the worker!

  Those who are not acquainted with her might not guess straight away that this girl is a mechanical engineer who specializes in motor vehicles and other internal combustion engines. Those who like to belittle the minds, intelligence and abilities of our women might not believe that Warĩĩnga is also an expert at fitting and turning, at forging and welding, at shaping metal to suit a variety of purposes.

  People love to denigrate the intelligence and intellectual capacity of our women by saying that the only jobs a woman can do are to cook, to make beds and to spread their legs in the market of love. The Warĩĩnga of today has rejected all that, reasoning that because her thighs are hers, her brain is hers, her hands are hers, and her body is hers, she must accord all her faculties their proper role and proper time and place and not let any one part be the sole ruler of her life, as if it had devoured all the others. That’s why the Warĩĩnga of today has said goodbye to being a secretary and has sworn that she will never type again for the likes of Boss Kĩhara, bosses whose condition for employing a girl is a meeting for five minutes of love after a hard drink.

  So Warĩĩnga went to the Polytechnic to study the very engineering course she had always dreamed of while she was a student at Nakuru Day Secondary, long before the Rich Old Man from Ngorika came into her life and initiated her into the dance of the hunter and the hunted. Whenever she entered the engineering workshop and felt her whole body being shaken by the drills, as they sent out sparks of fire in every direction, or she hammered the iron that had already been smelted in the huge blast furnaces, Warĩĩnga was always filled with the joy of someone who watches the power of her mind and body struggling against nature, turning molten iron, for instance, into products designed to enhance human lives.

  But the skill that thrilled her most was her ability to take apart and re-assemble internal combustion engines. The smell of burning diesel or petrol was the most intoxicating perfume. The noise of machines in a workshop, of iron drilling into iron, of iron filing iron, of iron hammering on iron, of workers raising their voices above the noise of metal on metal—to Warĩĩnga these noises were like a beautiful song sung by the best of choirs.

  The music of a modern factory! That is good!

  Warĩĩnga has now done two years at the Polytechnic. She has one more year to go to complete the course.

  The first year was the hardest for Warĩĩnga. The male students in her class used to laugh at her. But when they saw her struggling with heavy metal tools, just as they did, or sweating by the blast furnaces, just as they did, and facing up to every challenge, they began to laugh less and less and to swallow their sarcastic remarks. But all the laughter and the remarks came to a sudden end when the results of the first term’s test were announced, and Warĩĩnga came fourth out of a class of twenty-five. Instead of laughing, their respect for her increased, and they started treating her as one of their comrades in their journey’s struggle.

  She also had financial problems. Most students at the Polytechnic were sponsored by employers, who paid all their fees and other costs. But Warĩĩnga had no sponsor. She was paying her own way. The money she had saved while working as a secretary at the Champion Construction Company was not enough to meet her fees, rent and food.

  Gatuĩria had offered to help with her fees and rent, but Warĩĩnga refused. She did not want to bind herself to Gatuĩria or to anyone else with strings of gratitude for charity. Self-reliance was self-reliance. So Warĩĩnga managed only by undertaking all sorts of odd jobs, like hairdressing in a Beauty Saloon, or typing research papers and dissertations, which Gatuĩria brought to her from the university.

  During that first year Warĩĩnga did not get enough rest. When she was not at school, she was at her books, and when she was not bent over her books, she was busy trying to earn money from odd jobs here and there, and when she was not doing any of these, she was attending judo and karate classes at the Kenya Martial Arts Club in the Ngara area. Warĩĩnga had resolved that she should be able to defend herself and stand on her own in every way.

  The problem of money eased in her second year. That was when Warĩĩnga got a chance to offer her services as a self-employed mechanic at Mwĩhotori Kiwanja Garage, near Mũnyua Road.

  Warĩĩnga was always to remember the very first day she passed the open-air garage. It was a Friday afternoon, about two. She was very hungry. But when she saw men working on motor vehicles, she suddenly decided to ask them if she could join them to earn a few cents. When they heard her request, the mechanics were beside themselves with laughter. One of them, who was stooping under the open bonnet of a lorry, straightened up and looked at Warĩĩnga with hatred, his mind searching for words to wound her. “Woman, why don’t you go and sell beer in a bar? Here there’s no juke box to stand beside so that you can swing your skirt to attract men.” Warĩĩnga suppressed her anger, for a beggar cannot afford to be too sensitive to insults. But she was determined to go on, for it’s the man who wants a shit who goes to the toilet and not the toilet to him. “I’m not standing here because of any desire to swing skirts or attract men,” she retorted.

  A mechanic who was lying underneath another lorry stood up and announced in a deliberately loud, sarcastic voice, so that all those around could hear: “Why don’t you come over here and remove and dismantle this engine which has given us a headache all day, and tell us what the problem is?”

  Warĩĩnga steeled herself, and she suddenly felt courage flood through her body. Without moving from where she stood, Warĩĩnga told the man that there was no need to dismantle the engine. “Just start the engine,” Warĩĩnga ordered him, with authority. After the engine had been started, Warĩĩnga walked over to it, and for a full minute she just looked at it. By now all the other mechanics and even several passers-by had stopped whatever they were doing and had crowded around the lorry to watch a woman daring to storm a man’s citadel. Warĩĩnga took her eyes off the engine, and she started looking about her on the ground where the lorry was parked, as if she were searching for something. She found a piece of wood shaped like a spoon with a long handle. She picked it up and banged it on a stone to remove the dust. She placed one end of the spoon against the side of the engine, and she put the other end to her ear, just as a doctor places a stethoscope on the chest of a patient and listens to his heartbeat. Warĩĩnga placed the end of the spoon at different points on the engine. The onlookers around her could not understand what she was doing. Suddenly Warĩĩnga paused, and for a time she concentrated on the odd movement of the third cylinder. Then she called over the man who had been working on the engine, gave him the piece of wood and asked him to listen. He did as he was told. Some of the spectators laughed at him, while others made sarcastic comme
nts about men who obeyed the childish orders of crazy women. Who had ever seen such madness as trying to find out what was wrong with an engine with a stick?

  Warĩĩnga asked him to describe what he could hear. The man promptly replied: “I can only hear a kind of grinding noise, like the sound of dented pieces of metal eating into each other.”

  Warĩĩnga asked him: “So what’s the problem?” Now everybody held their breath, quite silent.

  The man who only a moment ago had acted like the expert now looked about him wildly, as if seeking help from those around. Failing to find help in his test, he lowered his eyes. He felt a lump block his throat, and he stammered out: “I don’t know.”

  Warĩĩnga told him that the unpleasant noise was being caused by a loose bolt that joined the conrod to the crankshaft. The people round started clapping their hands. Others went away, shaking their heads, saying: “Really, I’ve yet to see anything to beat that! So our women have acquired that much learning!” The other workers welcomed her as one of them, and they allowed her to use their tools until she could buy her own set.

  From that day on, a deep friendship developed between Warĩĩnga and the other workers. The more they saw Warĩĩnga at work and observed that she did not avoid any type of work, the more they respected her.

  One day a man brought in his car for a check. When he saw that it was Warĩĩnga who opened the bonnet, he was clearly doubtful. But noticing Warĩĩnga’s beauty, he started teasing her lightheartedly, and then he touched her breasts. Warĩĩnga raised her head, looked at him with eyes that held no laughter, and in a voice that indicated neither mirth nor anger, she calmly but firmly warned him against teasing her: “I am a worker. You should respect or despise my work according to my performance. But my breasts are not part of this task. My beauty or ugliness has nothing to do with the job in hand.” The man took this to be the usual woman’s come-hither pretense at offense, intended to lure him on. So when Warĩĩnga bent over her work again, he fondled her buttocks.

  Let me tell you, the lesson Warĩĩnga taught that man, wherever he might be, he has probably never forgotten. For Warĩĩnga turned like lightning, and in a twinkling of an eye, she had assaulted him with so many judo kicks and karate chops that for a time he saw stars. When he was finally felled by her judo kicks, he beseeched her to stop: “I’m sorry.” The man got to his feet, took his car keys, started the engine and literally raised dust on the tarmac as he drove away.

  Warĩĩnga’s fame spread to every corner of the city. The respect of the other workers for her increased, and they sang of her diligence, perseverance and courage.

  Warĩĩnga, daughter of the Iregi rebels!

  The fruits of each worker’s labor went into his own pocket. But at the end of every month each worker would contribute a fixed sum to a common pool, from which they paid the ground rent for the garage to the Nairobi City Council and their other common expenses. And if one of the workers had an unexpected problem, he or she was allowed to borrow from the common pool to meet his or her needs. No one in that community of workers lived on the sweat of another. Everyone received according to his ability, his reputation and the quickness of his hands. When one of them had a lot of customers, he would pass on some of the work and the benefits to others with less work. The enterprise would never have made them rich, but self-employment did provide them with clothes and food and shelter. Their ambition was to build a modern, communally owned garage on that very site one day. Their leader had contacted the City Council and had been promised the site.

  And so, during her second year, Warĩĩnga was to be found at the Polytechnic, attending classes, or in her room at Ngara doing drawings as part of her homework, or at the Mwĩhotori Kiwanjani Garage.

  It is to the garage that Warĩĩnga is going this Saturday to finish her job before setting off on the journey to Ilmorog.

  Warĩĩnga enters a hotel near the garage, for that’s where she keeps her overalls and her tool kit. Most of the workers who come to the hotel for a morning cup of tea know her. They exchange good-humored remarks and jokes, including some that touch on the subject of men and women. But the playful remarks and the ribald jokes are based on mutual respect. They take her to be one of them. They feel she belongs to them all.

  Warĩĩnga changes into her greasy overalls. She hands her safari suitcase and her handbag over for safe-keeping at the hotel.

  Warĩĩnga goes out. She crosses the road.

  Across the road stands the garage.

  Her heart begins to beat faster. Why have all the other workers gathered together in a silent group, with faces set like those of people bereaved? Why are they all looking so anxious at such an early hour?

  Hurry up, Warĩĩnga! Faster, Warĩĩnga! Move, Warĩĩnga!

  “Why are all you people looking so sad?”

  “Don’t ask any questions, friend.”

  “No, tell me!”

  “Our site has just been sold off.”

  “Sold by whom?”

  “By the City Council, of course.”

  “To whom? To whom has our inheritance been sold?”

  “To Boss Kĩhara and a group of foreigners from the USA, Germany and Japan.”

  “To Boss Kĩhara?”

  “He owns almost the whole of Nairobi. They intend to build a big tourist hotel on this site.”

  “So that our women can have facilities for selling their flesh to foreigners!”

  “Why can’t they admit that they’re building a factory for modern prostitution!”

  “That’s quite true. These tourist hotels are meant to nurture a nation of prostitutes, servants, cooks, shoeshine boys, bed makers, porters. . . .”

  “Sum it up in a phrase, and say: to nurture servants to meet the whims of foreigners.”

  Boss Kĩhara, the Devil’s feast, foreigners, finance houses—and now tourism? Thoughts of these dance in Warĩĩnga’s mind. And suddenly Warĩĩnga remembers Mũturi and Wangarĩ and the student leader. When will they be released from detention, if ever? Warĩĩnga feels as if she is suffocating with anger.

  “When the bracken has been cleared from the land, fig trees often replace it, and they are both bad for the land. I ran away from cold only to run into frost!” one of the workers says, as if he were talking to himself.

  “It would be terrible if we were to let them cut off our hands without offering any resistance!” Warĩĩnga says in a voice heavy with tears, as if replying to the other worker.

  But her heart rages with the courage of a rebel.

  3

  It’s the afternoon of that same Saturday. Warĩĩnga and Gatuĩria are on their way to Ilmorog. Gatuĩria is at the wheel of a red Toyota Corolla. They want to spend the night at Ilmorog and drive to Nakuru tomorrow morning.

  They want to tell her parents about their decision to get married.

  Gatuĩria is wearing gray trousers, a white shirt and a brown leather jacket. Warĩĩnga has changed out of the jeans she put on at Ngara earlier in the day. Now she is wearing a long kitenge dress of red and white flowers. Her hair is tied in plaits running from the front of her head to the back. Who could tell that this is the Warĩĩnga who was dressed in jeans earlier today? Who could tell that this is the Warĩĩnga who put on greasy overalls earlier today? And who would guess that this beautiful girl is an expert at judo and karate? Who would guess that those hands move more swiftly than lightning when they are holding a gun?

  Gatuĩria steals glances at Warĩĩnga. His eyes have never tired of her beauty. And his inner eye is telling him: Not many months from now, this lovely woman will be known as Warĩĩnga wa Gatuĩria. When such thoughts strike him, Gatuĩria feels a sharp pang in his stomach and back; his heart rises as if it had wings to fly; and his body feels all warm with the blood of love. His heart begins to sing: Happy is the woman whose heart beats to the sound of the loved one calling out at the gate as he returns from
the victorious defense of his country against enemy attack. Happy is the man whose heart beats in time to the voice of his love drawing water or gathering greens in the valley. Happy are the men and women whose hearts beat in unison as they sit on a platform at night to scare away birds from the millet fingers. Happy are men and women when youthful blood courses through their veins, their hearts crying out to each other: What can I do, my love, now that my love for you has weakened me so?

  At such moments, the talker feels as if he or she were speaking beautiful verse like the poetry of a gĩcaandĩ singer, and the listener feels the words of the loved one plucking at the golden strings of the harp lodged in the heart. That’s how Gatuĩria and Warĩĩnga feel now, as they travel to Ilmorog asking each other riddles of love.

  Gatuĩria is talking about music. It was soon after the Devil’s feast that Gatuĩria decided that the period of searching was over and that the clan those who cry of “I’ll do it tomorrow” would wait forever for a morrow that will never come. Gatuĩria decided then that he would never again talk about the composition of a national oratorio until he had accomplished the task, a score to be sung by hundreds of human voices, with an orchestra of hundreds of instruments. He also decided that he would never discuss the issue of marriage or even introduce Warĩĩnga to his parents until he had successfully crossed the river of his intended composition.

  For two years Gatuĩria concentrated exclusively on his work, and he would literally lock himself into his study whenever the Muse visited him. At such times Gatuĩria never allowed anybody to enter his study. A task is a burden only when it has not been tackled.