Minutes of Glory

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  But my brother and I were interested in one thing only: their shadows. Alas, theirs crossed with those of the people still surrounding the couple. Thereafter, the couple walked under the veranda, where their shadows became indistinct from those of the roofs of buildings. Even after all the other children had satisfied their curiosity and gone away, we didn’t give up and stalked them from one grocery to the next. The white pair tried to throw us off by flinging some coins on the ground. We did not budge. We needed their shadows, not their coins. We wanted the pair to come out of the cover of the veranda.

  Eventually they did come out of the verandas. We followed them toward their car. And then we saw their shadows, clear, distinct. Alas, theirs behaved like ours and the Indians’, and they were as dark as ours. It was not enough for my brother and I, and we kept on following the pair expecting their real shadows to somehow appear. Out of curiosity, the couple stopped and beckoned us. The woman took out some candy. We shook our heads. What do you want?

  ‘Shake your hands,’ my brother blurted out, casting a glance at me.

  I knew the meaning of the glance. The woman carefully put on her gloves and, with a bemused look, extended a gloved hand to my brother. I was not looking at the handshake: I concentrated on the shadows on the ground. It was my turn to shake hands with the equally bemused gentleman who did not bother to put on a glove. My brother did what I had done: concentrated on the shadows. We arrived at the same thought.

  We went home, silent, not arguing, nobody claiming victory, not even discussing the reaction of the white couple to our request. But we were united by a discovery that needed no words. At home we told the other siblings that we had discovered a secret. We gave a day when we would disclose our finding. Word went out. On the evening of our disclosure, our hut was packed. Some stood outside. We noted that even some distant neighbours had joined the expectant crowd.

  The time came. We stood side by side. Sepulchral silence. Expectations. We had just made a great discovery, we said in unison. Everything carried a shadow. The announcement was greeted with sniggers, and a few So whats. The drama was slipping from us. I responded quickly: humans, animals, plants, stones and things were kin: they all had shadows.

  Children, are you saying that we are stones?

  My brother quickly announced our real find. White, brown, and black people were equal. Proof: we had shaken hands with white people and there was not a single difference between their shadows and ours. Ours and theirs were equally dark. This did not wow our listeners. It seemed that people were more interested in our encounter with the white couple than our momentous conclusion.

  Well, our discovery did not change the world, and it took blood spilt in the streets and mountains of our country to make the colonial state come around to our discovery and accept one person, one vote. But my brother and I knew this: if they had accepted our simple proof, there would have been no bloodshed, no Mau Mau, no concentration camps. Unfortunately, he did not live long to enjoy the morning after the vote. I lost him to a car accident.

  Years later, after I had all but forgotten our shadowy contest, I went for a film course at Stockholm’s Dramatiska Institutet. We were twelve students drawn from different parts of the world, all excited at the prospect of mastering the camera and Hollywood mystery at an institute that had produced the greatest of Swedish cinema, Ingmar Bergman.

  The teacher entered the class. We would learn later that he was a famous film director, an exile who, as a student, had run from the Hungarian revolt in 1956. He spoke English hesitantly, interspersing every other sentence with Varsågod, mycket bra, but it was clear that he was telling us to follow him. We were going to a studio, we thought, our first visit to a real film studio. But the mystery destination deepened when we went outside the building into the cobbled streets of Stockholm. It was spring. Everybody was dressed in bright colors. After a bit of walking, we entered a gallery, an art museum, not the Hollywood-type studio of our dreams.

  He stopped by Rembrandt’s The Blinding of Samson and The Night Watch and told us to look at them carefully. I did not see why he made us look at such violence for our very first lesson in film.

  He wanted us to note the way the artist used light. See the source of the light? Light source, whether sun in the day or moon at night, or fire inside or outside a house, and the time – yes, the time or even the passage of it – through the window, or a crack in the wall, determined how shadows fell on the subject. In religious painting, God was the universal source of light. In Geertgen tot Sint Jans’s Nativity at Night, the child Jesus was the source of the light that illuminated everything around him. Varsågod. He dwelt a little longer on Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, pointing out the way the artist had subtly shaded the ears and mouth to effect the mystery smile.

  Then he talked about the chiaroscuro in art, photography, and the cinema, and talked of a Michelangelo Marisi da Caravaggio as the apostle of light, citing his Matthew trio of The Calling of Saint Matthew, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, and The Inspiration of Saint Matthew in Contarelli Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.

  The shadow defines the identity of being. The original cinema, he pointed out, was a play of shadows, where performers and their actions behind a screen came across to the audience as shadows. Plato’s allegory of the cave was shadowgraphy – well, oral cinematography.…

  I stood still, not listening. The image of the brother I lost to a car accident soon after a discovery that could have altered the course of history had it not been ignored, came back. It dawned on me, all at once, that it was Njinjũ, in my village, long ago, who gave me my first lesson in art and film.

  FOR MŨMBI WANJIKŨ NGŨGĨ

  Cape Town, Table Mountain, South Africa, June 11–22, 2012

  THE GHOST OF MICHAEL JACKSON

  I

  The events of this story took place in Manira, a coastal town in a postcolonial African country, scene of a history of rivalry between native animists who believed that everything was imbued with God, and other faiths that, over the years, had come to us by the sea – Islam, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant. Swords and guns on their sides, they claimed that God was only to be found in the books they read and dwelt only in buildings they set up, that God confided in their priests exclusively. They expelled God from the universe and confined him to a book, a building, and a priest. Colored with all hues of hate, the only thing that united the book-based faiths was their hatred of native animism and the magic of the universe in the everyday.

  And yet the evidence of magic is there in the name of the town. Local lore tells of some missionaries of all faiths – Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim, Protestant of the Anglican variety, and even reluctant missionaries from Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism – who, on their way to Manira in the Pacific, met on the sands of this area and started fighting on behalf of their God. They were so absorbed in the sounds of the clashing of their swords that they did not see the devil, frothing laughter, emerge from the sea and pull them down into the quicksand. The native watchers saw them disappear; a big wave swept away all traces of their struggle. They called it Manira in ironic reference to the Manira of their intended destiny, but this time meaning the place where a laughing devil once swallowed quarrelsome missionaries. Their followers never learned the lesson. The events about to unfold happened hundreds of years after the frothing devil came to the shore.

  You don’t believe in devils and magic, you say?

  This is a story for those who believe in magic. So, if you are one of those who don’t believe in magic, miracles, and mirages, stop there. The only assurance I can give is that, on this occasion, I was there: I saw what I saw and heard what I heard. Do you still want to hear it?

  II

  The first time it happened was in church. The priest, in the regalia of his office, sonorously went on about sin and damnation and redemption, dwelling on sex and drinking. He was more concerned with the latter because it was alcohol that led to other indulgences. He told a parabl
e of a drunk who fell into a ditch and landed on a nest of red ants that, thanking their good luck, started feasting on his flesh. Picture him snoring through the bites; imagine him later in the morning telling his wife and family what had befallen him, every word a lie, his every sentence thus sinking him deeper into sin. The person could even be sitting in a pew, in this very church, without any intention to confess, the priest surmised.

  The horror on the faces of women – Joycelin, the local judge’s wife, among them – at the implication that such a miscreant could be seated among them affected the priest strangely, making his voice soar to new heights of righteous indignation.

  God sees you, I can see you, he intoned, then stopped, but his finger, pointing at the congregation, remained in the air. What started as a parable seemed to have changed into a probability. Slowly and deliberately his eyes wandered over the audience, piercing the heart of each. A scared silence softened the audience into a sense of the sacred so that when suddenly a man stood up, tearing asunder the sacred silk of silence, all eyes turned toward him.

  Stop softening it with parables, the man said slowly, as if about to confess publicly. You must have seen me in the ditch, this morning. Then, wagging his finger at the priest, he raised his wrath a notch higher: Why didn’t you lift a finger to help me up? Where was the Good Samaritan you always preach about? Why do you spy on me in my home, listening in to talks between man and wife? And now you ridicule me in the house of worship? God saw me, he sees everything, he never said a thing in censure: do you think you are bigger than God?

  Without waiting for the priest to answer, the man walked out, saying that he was done with churches and sermons.

  The priest was not abashed; he stood there, with a beaming smile, looking completely satisfied: the man’s outburst had just proved the prophetic side of his sermons. He had not been anywhere near the scenes of the man’s sin, he told the congregation, but, as they had just seen with their very eyes, God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. The man is wrong about God’s apparent silence. I am God’s eye. I am God’s mouth. I am the voice of God.

  Mo, who sat in the front pew, loved the stories he heard in church, parables mostly. He liked best the story of Jesus turning one loaf and one glass of wine into many types of bread and wine that fed and wined thousands. It was something he would have liked to do: feed the hungry of the world with just one loaf, or quench their thirst with just one glass of wine. Thinking about it in light of the priest’s admonitions about alcohol, he wondered about the sin and damnation of wining the whole world. Did Jesus sin? He shook off the heretic thought and focused on the scene that had just happened between the man and the priest. The real-life drama overwhelmed those of parables, and he truly enjoyed it. And he would have gone home satisfied except that the scene and the drama of women weeping, a man walking out, and the glint of triumph in the priest’s eyes now triggered Mo’s memory.

  Mo, a ten-year-old dreamer and reader of strange books, had difficulties in recalling details of the past, what he had seen, heard, or felt. In the dark, everything was clear, but in the light, everything was dark or blurred, and it took a face, a voice, a gait, a gesture, or some other detail to trigger it into clarity. Now the glint in the priest’s eyes had done it.

  He thought he had seen him; yes, he was sure he had seen him; no, he was not so sure, the light blurred the outline of the time and place and the person even. He shut his eyes tight to simulate darkness. No, yes, yes, it was three o’clock, yes, saw him sneak out of bed, take a whole bottle of Johnnie Walker from a small cabinet in the kitchen, and, in two or three gulps, swallow it all. He took out another bottle, three or four gulps, and there he lay on the floor, totally out, even pissing on the floor. Then, on all fours, he crawled through the urine, back to bed, where he snored and farted thunder alternately. Mo remembered wanting to shout something but his voice had faded into sleep … and on waking up he thought the whole experience a bad dream.

  Now, torn between doubt and certainty, he did not want to say anything in front of the congregation, but, knowing that the priest always mingled with the worshippers outside afterward, Mo went out and waited to seize any opening for a dialogue.

  Donned in the flowing robes of holiness, the priest did not disappoint, though Mo found the robes less intimidating now that the wearer was not hiding behind the podium, a distance from the front pew.

  Excuse me, sir, Padre, Mo said, politely.

  Thinking that this young man was going to ask a question about the sermon or something, the priest stopped, a smile simultaneously lighting up his face. The tall thirty-year-old something towering over the earnest face of a slender ten-year-old was a striking visual contrast, older and younger versions of each other.

  And what can I do for you, my son?

  Mo just wanted to know the hour of confession today.

  Oh, not a question about the sermon, the priest thought, but this was even better: a confession?

  Every time is a timely time for those who seek salvation, said the priest. Seek, and ye shall find. Son, confession is a sacred contract of a contrite heart with the cleanser of human souls.

  That this youth should be so desirous of confessing that he had approached him so soon after the service was the second testimony to the quality of the sermon. Already, it had driven out an unrepentant drunken devil’s advocate from the premises; now it had brought to the same premises a repentant angel child. No wonder Jesus spoke in parables.

  Within minutes, Mo was standing outside the confessional window, ahead of a line that included Joycelin, the pious wife of the judge. Framed by the tiny window with dotted holes, Mo stared into a transfiguration. A rainbow halo hung around the hallowed window behind which sat or stood the priest, whose disjointed, glinting eyes could be seen through the holes. Mo could picture, even feel, the intense light emanating from the eyes that watched him, which raised more doubts in Mo, tying his tongue. How was it possible that a man who the night before wallowed in his vomit, shit, and urine could be the calm, collected, handsome presence whose voice made women swoon and men feel uplifted? Why pursue silhouettes of dreams at night?

  It’s okay to lay down the burden in your heart, the voice behind the window encouraged him.

  Mo cleared his throat:

  Forgive me, Father, for you have sinned and come short of the glory of the Lord.

  You have the order of the words wrong, the padre corrected him, gently. The words are: forgive me, Father, for I have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

  I forgive you, Father, for you have sinned and come short of the glory of God, Mo said.

  No, no, said the priestly voice, with infinite patience. Just confess, son, just confess without preliminaries.

  Father, I am a little scared, Mo said. I fear what will happen to me.

  Don’t fear. Come ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. What is it that scares you?

  God once cursed Ham for seeing his father naked and not doing something about it, Mo said in a tone between a question and a statement.

  Yes, said the priest, that He did and laid the burden of blackness on Ham and his children forever. Jesus changed all that; his Grace redeemeth Ham’s repentant children and maketh them whiter than snow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. That’s from Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 18.

  I hear you, Father. Do you think it a sin to watch a priest awash in alcohol and not do something about it?

  Oh no, and yes, my son, but …?

  Father, I assure you that, unlike Ham, I tried to warn you, but since I didn’t actually say anything …

  Son, take care that you don’t sin against the Holy Spirit, said the priest with a slightly bemused tone. When was this Ham business?

  Some time ago, late at night … don’t you remember? Even today, at the podium, you stunk of alcohol. Luckily none of y
our congregation was near enough to smell it. Were you preaching to yourself?

  The priest did not know who this upstart was, and the rules of the priestly trade did not allow him to ask accusatory details. He must follow the upstart, the better to know him and his parents. But by the time he came around to the front, he only saw Mo’s back in the distance. How could the upstart have seen me? I was alone in my house.

  The priest was young; his life, a marvel. He had escaped the hardships of a herdsboy only because of the death of his father’s cattle, and then his father. A chance encounter with a white Catholic Father impacted his life dramatically. The Father was dishing out candies to children in the streets, enticing them to follow him all the way back to the church. The glass pane of the church had the colour of candies, and he thought of the church as an endless source of free candy. His enthusiasm was noticed. As an altar boy he found himself drawn toward the life of a spiritual shepherd; in time, he served under different fathers and grew in the church. He was lucky: he narrowly escaped the fate of those boys and girls turned into play objects of the celibate clerics. The fact that some of them would indulge in debauchery and yet be cleansed by prayer and repentance fascinated him. There was no sin so dirty that it could not cleansed by confession.

  He rose rapidly in the Catholic order and entered priesthood, part of the third-generation postindependence youth meant to inject the postcolonial church with the face and vigour of black youth. The church had changed over the years: in the colonial days, the church obtained land from the colonial state for free. The cost of building came from Rome or the various orders of white priesthood. Now a parish gave land, donated money for building, and maintained it with their harvests, signs that the colonial church had finally taken root among the natives. The congregation loved him: they bought him a house and a car, and met the wages of those who worked around the house – gardeners, cooks, and housekeepers. The glory of their priest shed light on their misery. (Others of the Protestant variety took the cue and became charismatic evangelists and televangelists. Their lavish lifestyles were evidence of their closeness to God. The priest prided himself on not being so lavish, and was very humble in his appearance.)