Devil on the Cross

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  Voice: I am a roaming spirit. I walk about the Earth, planting the tree that grows the fruit of the knowledge that enables him who eats it to tell good from evil.

  Warĩĩnga: The Tempter?

  Voice: Oh, of course, you used to be a woman of the Church. The Church of the Holy Rosary in Nakuru, wasn’t it?

  Warĩĩnga: So?

  Voice: That’s how you guessed who I am so quickly,

  Warĩĩnga: I don’t know you.

  Voice: Are you going to deny me, you who have always tried to crucify me on the Cross?

  Warĩĩnga: I said I didn’t know you. Who are you?

  Voice: I told you. I am the roaming spirit who distributes the knowledge that enables men to tell the difference between good and evil. I am also a Tempter and a Judge.

  Warĩĩnga: A Tempter and a Judge?

  Voice: Yes, of souls.

  Warĩĩnga: And what are you doing here? Or are you planning to try the souls of those who are competing in the art of stealing and robbing?

  Voice: And you, what are you doing here? He who keeps the company of the corrupt becomes corrupted.

  Warĩĩnga: I came here to see a truly amazing sight—

  Voice: Is there a difference between a thief and a man who looks on?

  Warĩĩnga: Ilmorog is home.

  Voice: Why is it home to you?

  Warĩĩnga: My father and mother. . . . Our home. . . . It’s home because my home and family are here.

  Voice: Big deeds make for a big mouth, but a big mouth does not make for big deeds. . . .

  Warĩĩnga: What are you trying to say? That Ilmorog is not my home?

  Voice: Those who looked on Ilmorog as their home showed their loyalty through their actions. When they saw their home burning, they cried out for help. They went to seek help.

  Warĩĩnga: Who are these people?

  Voice: Wangarĩ and Mũturi—didn’t you know?

  Warĩĩnga: I had nowhere to turn.

  Voice: Because you are neither hot nor cold. You said just now that there are two worlds.

  Warĩĩnga: I was only repeating a saying.

  Voice: You don’t know which the two worlds are?

  Warĩĩnga: The two worlds? No!

  Voice: But you claim to be educated.

  Warĩĩnga: Just Cambridge, EACE. When I was young I used to dream of learning all there was to know in the world. I wanted to climb the mountain of knowledge, the highest mountain on Earth, to climb and climb until I stood on the highest peak, the whole Earth below me. But today my education can’t even fill one small stomach for a day.

  Voice: Education up to EACE level is still education. What’s wrong is the teaching. For today children are taught to shut their eyes and block their ears so they’ll never see the needs of the people or hear their cry. He who used to hear has become deaf. The products of such schools are the ones of whom it has been said: Woe unto this generation, for they have eyes and they cannot see, and they have ears and they cannot hear! For they have been taught to see and to hear only one world. What were you saying about two worlds? You mean the world of the robber and the world of the robbed; the worlds of the lords of theft and the victims of theft, of the oppressor and the oppressed, of those who eat what has been produced by others and the producers themselves.

  Warĩĩnga: Who are you? You are repeating the things we said last night in Mwaũra’s matatũ. Aren’t those words the very ones that were voiced by Mũturi last night?

  Voice: Those two know all about it, for they have been robbed all their lives.

  Warĩĩnga: Mũturi, robbed? Of what? He is not one of the rich people of this country.

  Voice: What did I tell you just now? That you have ears and you can’t hear; you have eyes and you can’t see.

  Your kind of learning has turned you upside-down. You have come to believe that the clouds are the Earth and the Earth is the clouds; that black is white and white is black; that good is evil and evil is good.

  You ask what has been stolen from Mũturi. Aren’t his sweat and blood worth anything? Where did they teach you the wealth of nations comes from? From the clouds? From the hands of the rich?

  Those gathered in the cave know the source of the wealth of nations well enough. For they know where they can drink water that they have not gone to fetch. They know where they can dam the water so it does not reach those who are downstream. They know where they can dig canals to divert the river so that it waters only their own fertile fields.

  That’s why whenever they gather together, they talk openly and frankly. They share the wisdom of “I eat this, and you eat that.”

  You don’t believe me? But haven’t you been inside the cave? As you and I are talking here, what do you think they are saying in there? Listen, and I’ll tell you, for it is said that even the wise can be taught wisdom. Just now, as we are talking, Kĩmeendeeri wa Kanyuanjii is standing on the platform. You should be there to see Kĩmeendeeri wa Kanyuanjii. His mouth is shaped like the beak of the red-billed ox-pecker, the tick bird. His cheeks are as smooth as a new-born baby’s. His legs are huge and shapeless, like giant banana stems or the legs of someone who is suffering from elephantiasis. But his disease is simply the grossness that comes from over-eating. His neck is formed from rolls of fat, like the skin of the hairy maggot. But this astonishing body, these legs and neck, have been completely covered by a white suit and a bow tie.

  He was given the name of Kĩmeendeeri during the Emergency because of the way he used to grind workers and peasants to death. Kĩmeendeeri was then a District Officer. He used to make men and women lie flat on the ground in a row, and then he would drive his Land Rover over the bodies. When Independence came, Kĩmeendeeri quickly climbed the administrative ladder to become a Permanent Secretary. Then he worked with foreign companies, especially those connected with finance. He now owns countless farms. His import-export businesses are equally numerous. He has dozens of tricks up his sleeve. His skill at theft and robbery is visible from a great distance.

  Today it is possible that Kĩmeendeeri will be crowned king of modern theft, robbery and service to foreigners.

  The ideas that will win him his victory over the other thieves and robbers show quite clearly that Kĩmeendeeri understands that the sweat and the blood of the workers are the wellsprings of wealth. Kĩmeendeeri is not even attempting to disguise the fact. He is telling the other delegates: “Our drinking of the blood of the workers, our milking of their sweat, our devouring of their brains—these three activities should be put on a scientific basis.” The scientific plan he will outline is this: Kĩmeendeeri wants to set up a research farm—the first stage in a long process—to experiment with his idea. The idea itself is both simple and complex.

  Kĩmeendeeri intends to fence off the farm with barbed wire, just like the wire that was used to fence off detention camps during the state of Emergency in colonial Kenya. He plans to pen the workers in there like animals. He will then fix electrically operated machines to their bodies for milking their sweat or the energy that produces the sweat, their blood and their brains. The three commodities will then be exported to foreign countries to feed industries there. For every gallon of sweat, or blood, or brains, Kĩmeendeeri will get commission at a fixed rate.

  Warĩĩnga: And how will he export the three commodities?

  Voice: He’ll construct pipelines. The blood will be poured into them and a machine will pump it to the importing foreign countries, just like petroleum oil! The company handling the trade will be called Kenyo-Saxon Exporters: Human Blood and Flesh.

  Warĩĩnga: But won’t the workers refuse to let their bodies be exploited like that? Won’t they refuse to be robbed of their lives?

  Voice: Why have you never prevented your own body from being exploited? . . . Anyway, the workers will never know what’s being done to them. They’ll never see or feel those machin
es and pipes in their bodies. And if they should ever chance to see them, they won’t mind the burden. . . .

  Warĩĩnga: Why?

  Voice: Because the Kĩmeendeeris of this world are not as foolish as you think they are. Kĩmeendeeri will show them only two worlds, that of the eater and that of the eaten. So the workers will never learn of the existence of a third world, the world of the revolutionary overthrow of the system of eating and being eaten. They will always assume that the two worlds of the eater and the eaten are eternal.

  Warĩĩnga: How will he manage to fool them like this?

  Voice: On the farm he’ll build churches or mosques, depending on the religious inclination of the workers. He will employ priests. Every Sunday the workers will be read sermons that will instruct them that the system of milking human sweat, human blood and human brains—the system of the robbery of human labor power and human skills—is ordained by God, and that it has something to do with the eventual salvation of their souls. It is written in the Holy Scriptures: Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are they that think ill of no man, for they shall see God. Blessed are they that daily observe the four commandments “Thou shall not kill,” “Thou shall not lie,” “Thou shall not steal,” “Thou shall not covet other people’s property,” for they shall inherit wealth in Heaven. The main farm song, the Shamba’s anthem, will run like this:

  Even if you cry and moan

  Because of your sins,

  Unless you carry the Cross,

  You’ll never find rest.

  Kĩmeendeeri will also build schools in which the workers’ children will be taught that the system of drinking human blood and eating human flesh has always held sway since the world was created and will always hold sway until the end of the world, and that there is nothing people can do to put an end to the system. The children will be allowed to read only those books that glorify the system of drinking human blood and eating human flesh. They will not be allowed to ask questions about the conditions of their lives or those of their parents, or that might raise doubts about the sanctity and necessity of drinking human blood and eating human flesh. They will sing only those songs and hymns and read only that literature that glorify the system of drinking human blood and eating human flesh.

  Kĩmeendeeri will also build a hall, where the people will be shown films and will be entertained by concerts and plays, but all these diversions will glorify the deeds, traditions and culture of the drinkers of human blood and the eaters of human flesh. The victims of cannibalism will always be presented as happy and contented people.

  Kĩmeendeeri will also publish newspapers, whose role will be to denigrate those opposed to the system of drinking human blood and eating human flesh, and to celebrate the charitable hand-outs of Kĩmeendeeri and his friends. He has not yet chosen a name for the newspapers, but titles like the Shamba Times or the Shamba Daily Flag or the Shamba Weekly News and Views will probably be considered suitable. Kĩmeendeeri will also build breweries, and clubs for hard liquor and other alcoholic drinks, like chang’aa and lager, so that alcohol will make idiots out of those who have not already been crazed by Christian and Muslim ritual.

  This means that the churches, the schools, the poetry, the songs, the cinema, the beer halls, the clubs, the newspapers will all act as brain-washing poisons whose purpose will be to convince the workers that in this world there is nothing as glorious as slavery to the Kĩmeendeeri class, so that each worker will look forward to the day he dies, when his body will become fertilizer to make the farm ever more productive. The intellectual and spiritual and cultural brain-washing poisons will make the workers believe, literally, that to obey the Kĩmeendeeri class is to obey God, and that to anger or oppose their overlords is to anger and oppose God.

  But to be on the safe side, Kĩmeendeeri will build prisons and law courts and will hire armed forces, so that anyone who opposes the Shamba’s system of laws or wishes to leave the confines of the farm will be punished by being jailed or detained in pits of total darkness or shot and thrown to hyenas on Ngong Hills.

  Warĩĩnga: Eaters of men! Is that possible?

  Voice: Jacinta, have you already forgotten that this is the teaching of your own Church?

  Warĩĩnga: Which is?

  Voice: That the eating of human flesh and the drinking of human blood is blessed on Earth and in Heaven? You beat your breast three times, and what do you say?

  Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,

  Miserere nobis.

  Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,

  Dona nobis pacem.

  Warĩĩnga: No! No! That’s not the way it is!

  Voice: Remember the Sacrament that you, Warĩĩnga, used to eat at the Church of the Holy Rosary in Nakuru? The priest, after giving you a piece of bread, would say:

  Ecce Agnus Dei,

  Ecce qui tollis peccata mundi. . . .

  Then he would tell you to do this as Jesus instructed:

  Take, eat, this is my body.

  Do this until I return.

  Corpus Christi. Amen.

  And the same priest would then give you red wine, and he would tell you to drink it as Jesus once commanded:

  Drink ye all of it, for this is my blood. Do this until I return.

  Dominus vobiscum,

  Per omnia saecula saeculorum.

  Amen.

  Warĩĩnga: That’s only religious ritual. It’s not a question of eating one another. The Sacrament symbolizes the Feast of the Passover.

  Voice: What’s the Passover?

  Warĩĩnga: I don’t know. It’s just one of the festivals of the Jews and of the Christian Church.

  Voice: Never mind. The Kĩmeendeeri class is only acting out the central symbolism of the Christian religion. The Kĩmeendeeris are the true Christian disciples.

  Warĩĩnga: It’s not the same thing. . . .

  Voice: Why isn’t it the same thing? Isn’t it that same religion that argues that the slave can never be equal to his master? Isn’t it that same religion that tells the oppressed not to observe the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?

  Warĩĩnga: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? What would the world come to if there were so much violence?

  Voice: Oh, it becomes violence only when a poor man demands the return of his eye or his tooth. What about when the Kĩmeendeeris poke out the poor man’s eyes with sticks, or lacerate him with whips? What about when they knock a worker’s tooth out with a rifle butt? Isn’t that violence? That’s why the Kĩmeendeeris, the Gĩtutus and the Ngũnjis will go on living it up all their lives on the backs of millions of workers. And you people will continue going to church or to the mosque every week to listen to the catechism of slavery.

  I say unto you

  That ye resist not evil.

  But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,

  Turn to him the other also.

  And if any man will sue thee at the law,

  And take away thy coat,

  Let him have thy cloak also.

  Take, yourself, for instance. When the Rich Old Man from Ngorika snatched your body, what did you do? You decided that you wouldn’t put up a fight. You said to yourself that since he had taken away your body, he might as well take your life too.

  Warĩĩnga: What else could I have done?

  Voice: You could have demanded the return of your eye and your tooth.

  Warĩĩnga: I’m a woman. I’m weak. There was nothing that I could do, nowhere that I could go and no one that I could turn to for help.

  Voice: What were you hoping for? That men who had preyed on you would rescue you from slavery imposed by themselves? The trouble with you, Warĩĩnga, is that you have no faith in yourself. You have never known who you are! You
have always wanted to remain a delicate flower to decorate the lives of the class of Boss Kĩhara. Warĩĩnga, Jacinta Warĩĩnga, look at yourself. Take a good look at yourself. You have a young body. The joys of life are all before you. If you hadn’t taken to singeing your hair with hot combs and your skin with lightening creams like Ambi, the sheer splendor of your body would have been pulling a thousand and one hearts behind it. The blackness of your skin is smoother and more tender than the most expensive perfume oils. Your dark eyes are brighter than the stars at night. Your cheeks are like two fruits riper than the blackberry. And your hair is so black and soft and smooth that all men must feel like sheltering from the sun in its shade.

  Now add to the power of youth and beauty the power of property, and you’ll rid your heart of all the troubles that poverty is heir to. Men will kneel before your body, some of them content merely to touch the soil on which your feet have trodden, others driven to standing by the wayside, hoping to be touched by your shadow as you pass by.

  Warĩĩnga: So what must I do?

  Voice: Come. Come. Follow me, and I’ll take you up into the big Ilmorog mountains, and I’ll show all the glories of the world. Let me show you palaces hedged round with flowers of all the different colors of the rainbow, take you on a tour of golf courses carpeted with green, guide you to night clubs where there is music that lures birds from the sky, sweep you up for a ride in a car that moves smoothly over tarmac highways with the grace of a young man sliding across the perfumed body of a woman. All those wonders will belong to you. . . .

  Warĩĩnga: To me?

  Voice:I’ll give them all to you.

  Warĩĩnga: You’ll give them to me?

  Voice: Yes, if you’ll kneel down before me and sing my praises.

  Warĩĩnga: What is your name?

  Voice: Oppressor. Exploiter. Liar. Grabber. I am worshipped by those who love to dispose of goods that have been produced by others. Give me your soul, and I’ll guard it for you.