Devil on the Cross Page 8

  The man with the dark glasses withdrew still further into his corner, as if he feared that he would be set on by the others, for he thought they were together.

  Mwaũra suddenly stopped singing, leaving the song hanging in the air.

  Mũturi asked him: “What! Have you cut the thread?”

  “No, I’m throwing the thread to you,” Mwaũra replied.

  Mũturi said: “We ourselves used to sing the song this way, or perhaps I should say, we used to sing the same tune with these words:

  I shall knock-a-knock the whites.

  I shall knock-a-knock the whites.

  I shall tell them: Go home now!

  Kenya does not belong to imperialists!”

  As Mũturi was about to sing the next verse, Wangarĩ joined in. Now the two sang with voices that blended together beautifully, like a mixture of perfume oils of the same kind.

  Kenya does not belong to you, imperialists!

  Kenya does not belong to you, imperialists!

  Pack up your bags and go!

  The owner of the homestead is on his way!

  Mũturi and Wangarĩ finished their duet together, like experts.

  Mwaũra said: “As for me, there was no song I wouldn’t have sung then. Even today there’s no song that I wouldn’t sing. I say this world is round. If it leans that way, I lean that way with it. If it stumbles, I stumble with it. If it bends, I bend with it. If it stays upright, I stay upright with it. If it growls, I growl with it. If it is silent, I am silent too. The first law of the hyena states: Don’t be choosy; eat what is available. If I find myself among members of the Akũrinũ sect, I become one of them; when I’m with those who have been saved, I too am saved; when I’m with Muslims, I embrace Islam; when I’m among pagans, I too become pagan.”

  “Gĩkũyũ said that no one can cook two pots of food simultaneously without burning the contents of one of them,” Mũturi said. “But you, Mwaũra, seem to be able to cook a couple of thousand pots at the same time! Are you really able to watch over the food in all of them, or do you end up with charred remains?”

  “The mouth that ate itself!” Mwaũra said and laughed. His heart had felt light and gay from the moment he heard the talk move away from Wangarũ and her problems. “It seems as if it was because of us matatũ drivers that the saying was coined. We are known for our loud mouths and our wagging tongues. Why? Because the fisherman does not know exactly where in the stream he will make his catch, so he casts his line here and there. For us matatũ drivers, our tongues are our hooks—”

  “For catching money?” Mũturi cut him short.

  “Yes, for catching money,” Mwaũra agreed at once. “And people. Or let’s say our tongues are bait for human beings along with their money. For money comes from human beings. So if you pay too much attention to what we say, you could get lost in broad daylight. Take a woman like this one here. She might have thought I really meant it when I said earlier that I would abandon her to the beasts in the forest. No, I just wanted to frighten her a little. We often have to work ourselves up into a state because there are passengers who like to cheat us. I normally carry two bags: one of honey and one of bitters.”

  “Of life and death?” Mũturi pressed, with a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  “You’ve put your finger on it,” Mwaũra replied simply, as if he had not noticed the sarcasm. “What do you think allows us to survive on these roads?”

  “I grant that what you’ve said could be true,” Mũturi said, and then he added pointedly: “because when we were at Nyamakũma, you were singing out that there was nowhere you would refuse to take a passenger in pursuit of money: to God’s Heaven or to the Devil’s Hell. But tell me, whose side are you on?”

  “God’s or the Devil’s?”

  “That’s the question,” Mũturi replied.

  “I’m equally at home on either side. Didn’t you say just now that I was someone who cooks two pots simultaneously? You were quite right. Only I don’t like burning the food in either pot. Let’s go back to the question of God and Satan. I have never set eyes on either of them. But let’s agree they both exist. Each has his own powers. And it is true that both have always sought votes on this Earth, the votes that are cast in the hearts of men. Can’t you see, then, that each is capable of improving or ruining your fortunes on this Earth? Just as you find candidates vying with each other as they tout for votes during elections, so we businessmen play off God and the Devil against each another. We don’t like to anger either of them. We pray to both.”

  “You are speaking like a traveler who has lost his way. Haven’t you heard it said that no man can serve two masters? Even the voter eventually casts his vote for one politician.”

  “A businessman has many masters. And he must obey them all. If this one calls me, I run to him. If that one calls me, I run to him.”

  They both fell silent. Mwaũra was driving carefully because he was nervous of the bends and corners on that road. The road was heavily used by oil tankers and by trailers and lorries loaded with charcoal, potatoes and vegetables.

  They had passed the road leading to Kijabe Mission and the church built by the Italian prisoners during the Second World War, and they were now descending to the bottom of the Rift Valley.

  Mũturi pressed Mwaũra with another question: “Don’t you believe in anything? Isn’t there anything that your heart considers bad or good?”

  Mwaũra was quiet at first, as if he had not heard the question clearly. Am I carrying a religious fanatic, a Jesus-is-My-Savior type? he asked himself.

  The other passengers waited in silence for Mwaũra’s reply because they too were turning over Mũturi’s question in their hearts.

  Mwaũra was conscious of the eagerness with which his reply was awaited. He cleared his throat. “You ask me about my beliefs, is that right? The affairs of the heart are difficult to fathom.* The hearts of men do not open up to each other like mole holes. The affairs of the heart are a dense forest, which no one can penetrate. First, ask yourself this: what’s a heart? Where does it reside? Is the heart an organ made of flesh, or is it mere breath? Once when I was a child my grandmother told me a story about a sick lion which, after eating a donkey’s heart, was cured of its illness. I was very sad. I asked my grandmother: ‘What will that donkey do when Jesus comes back and wakes the dead?’ My grandmother told me: ‘Don’t bother me with chatter; your animals won’t be resurrected.’

  “A man may return to a homestead he once abandoned. The other day I came back to the very question I asked as a child when I read in a newspaper, Taifaleo, that these days a heart can be removed from one person and planted inside someone else. The question is this: that person, is he the same man as the one who was there before, or is he now a new person as he has a new heart? When the Day of Resurrection comes, what will the two people do when both bodies claim the same heart? Think about the heart that has been shared by two bodies. Suppose the heart is upright, obedient, clean. What will prevent both bodies from scrambling for it?

  “I am full of doubt. When a heart is transferred from one body to another, does it emigrate with all the integrity or wickedness of the first body, or does it assume the corruption of the new body?

  “Now, let us consider a land peopled with rich and poor citizens. A rich man may indulge in all sorts of wickedness, but when he is about to die, he goes to a hospital and he buys the heart of a poor but upright person. So the rich man goes to Heaven because of the righteousness of the poor, and the poor man goes to Hell because of the wickedness of the rich or because he is now without a soul! Ha! ha! ha!”

  Mwaũra cut short his own monologue with laughter. He laughed and laughed like someone who is about to say something funny but, as he is trying to say it, is struck by the humor of it. Still laughing, Mwaũra resumed. “I would like to start a heart business, a market for human hearts, a shop for human hearts, a s
upermarket for human hearts, Permanent Sale. . . . I wonder how much money a heart like mine would fetch?”

  With that, Mwaũra collapsed with laughter.

  But not a single passenger joined in.

  By now they had gone past the road to Nare Ngare and Narok. The satellite station was to their left, Kijabe hills to their right. Mount Longonot lay ahead. Darkness had embraced the whole land. But the lights from Mwaũra’s Model T Ford and from the other vehicles going in the same or in the opposite direction cleared a passage, splitting the darkness into two halves. Some drivers did not dim their lights. When Mwaũra’s eyes were blinded by these lights, he would swear by his mother, would use long, unmentionable words to curse the drivers. Once he said: “Those driving licenses that are for sale are breeding danger on the roads! Can you believe that today a mere babe in arms is able to tuck a driving license into its pocket on paying 500 shillings? Even though it may never have set eyes on a steering wheel!”

  “The water has become sour!” Mũturi told him.

  “And the hearts of men have become empty!” Wangarĩ added. Mũturi and Wangarĩ began to sing together:

  Famine has increased in our land,

  But it has been given other names,

  So that the people should not discover

  Where all the food has been hidden.

  Two bourgeois women

  Ate the flesh of the children of the poor.

  They could not see the humanity of the children

  Because their hearts were empty.

  Many houses, and acres of land,

  And mounds of stolen money—

  These cannot bring peace to a person,

  Because they have been taken from the poor.

  Now look away from the rich

  At the poor, and at the children.

  They are all stagger-a-staggering on the highway

  Because their hearts are empty.

  Mũturi said: “The rich stagger because they over-eat.”

  Wangarĩ added: “And the poor because they are starving.”

  They sang in unison: “. . . Because their hearts are empty. . . .”

  Again Mwaũra asked himself: What kind of religious fanatics have I burdened myself with? Could they all be members of the sect of Deep Waters?

  “Have you returned to the problem of the human heart?” Mwaũra asked, in a tone that betrayed his impatience with Mũturi and Wangarĩ. “Hearts, hearts, hearts! What is a heart? A breeze, a breath of wind, a voice? No! The heart is a passing cloud that is transformed by the dreams of a man crushed by poverty into a golden ladder that reaches to God’s Heaven or a ladder of redhot coals constructed to guide His enemies’ descent into Hell. Where is the market in which I can sell my heart to a fool for any sum he cares to name?”

  Mũturi quickly replied: “The human heart? A breeze, a breath of wind, a passing cloud? A dream ladder in the mind of person made sleepless by poverty? No! The human heart is flesh and it is not flesh. The heart makes a man and it is made by man. The heart is borne by the body and in turn becomes the body. There is in man an organ called the heart. That organ is a kind of engine that pumps blood into the arteries and veins that carry food to all the cells of the body and remove the waste from all parts of the body. The organ cooperates with all the other organs of the body. These organs have to work together to make a human being see, touch, hear, smell, taste, talk, swing his arms, walk, start building his life.

  “What he himself builds is the other heart. That other heart is the humanity we fashion with our hands, aided by our eyes, our ears, our noses, our mouths. That other heart is the product of our work and our actions, which are guided by our mind—the work and actions involved in modifying nature to make things to meet our needs, like shelter to keep out rain, clothes to keep out cold and sun, food to make the body grow and many other needs.

  “That humanity is in turn born of many hands working together, for, as Gĩkũyũ once said, a single finger cannot kill a louse; a single log cannot make a fire last through the night; a single man, however strong, cannot build a bridge across a river; and many hands can lift a weight, however heavy. The unity of our sweat is what makes us able to change the laws of nature, able to harness them to the needs of our lives, instead of our lives remaining slaves of the laws of nature. That’s why Gĩkũyũ also said: Change, for the seeds in the gourd are not all of one kind.

  “That humanity, fruit of the work of our hands and minds striving together to subdue nature, is what distinguishes a human being from a beast, a tree and all the other creatures in nature’s kingdom.

  “Tell me this: is any other creature able to trap and yoke the wind, water, lightning, steam? Able to tie their legs and arms with chains and lock them up, making them prisoners, submissive and obedient to its needs? No. Human nature and animal nature are quite different. Animals stoop low before nature, allowing themselves to be turned this way and that by her, just as sausages are turned casually in the fire by little boys. But the human being wrestles with nature and strives to command her.

  “Look at the fruits of the combined labor of many hands: roads, and rails, and cars, and trains, and many other types of wheel that permit man to run faster than the hare or the swiftest animal in the forest; airplanes that give man wings more powerful and faster than those of any bird in the sky; missiles faster than sound and lightning; heavy ships that float, miraculously, on deep seas without sinking the way Peter did in the Sea of Galilee; telephones, radios, televisions, devices that are able to capture the voice and substance of a human being, so that his face and his voice remain alive even after his body is dead and buried and has decayed. What marvel could be greater than that? Look at the towns we have built with our hands: Mombasa, Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kitale, Kisumu, Rũũwa-inĩ and Ilmorog. Look at the coffee, and the tea, and the sugar cane, and the cotton, and the rice, and the beans, and the maize we have grown out of a handful of seeds. Look at the fire trapped inside copper wires that stretch from the Rũirũ, Athi and Sagan Rivers, so that we can have suns and moons and stars in our towns and in our houses after nature’s sun, moon and stars have gone to bed! If the fruits of that co-operation had not been grabbed by the clan of parasites, where do you think that we, the clan of producers, would be today? Would we still know the meaning of cold, hunger, thirst and nakedness?

  “That humanity is the heart of man because the heart of man is linked irrevocably with the growth of his nature as a man. Can you tell us the price of a heart now, you cheap and foolish merchant?”

  Mũturi was panting a little because of the fervor of his argument and the thoughts in his head. He had often turned over such thoughts in his mind, but never before had he managed to clothe them in words. He was surprised at himself, for he could not identify the source of those philosophical thoughts.

  Mwaũra appealed to his passenger. He said to Mũturi: “According to your outlook, there are no good or evil hearts. They are all part of our humanity. For remember, we were talking about good and evil. Now, your outlook and mine are identical. In this world there is no good or evil. In this world there are no good or evil hearts. A heart is a heart. Talk of Heaven and Hell is nothing more than a collection of stories that are intended to frighten children. What are we arguing about? Let there be peace! Let there be money!”

  “Heaven and Hell?” Mũturi jumped back into the debate. “Both exist, and there is a difference between them, just as there is a difference between good and evil, a good heart and an evil heart. Listen. Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mold it, and those committed to breaking it up; those whose aim is to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow, asking ourselves about the future of
our children, and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes, encouraging us to care only for our stomachs today, without thinking about the tomorrow of our country.

  “It is a war without spectators. For each man is part of the forces that have been recruited for creating, building, making our humanity grow and blossom in order to nurture our human nature and create our own Heaven, thus taking on the nature of God—these are the forces of the clan of producers; or he is part of the forces of destruction, of dismantling, of harassing and oppressing the builders and the creators, the forces that seek to suppress our humanity, turning us into beasts in order that we should create our own Hell, thus taking on the nature of Satan—these are the forces of the clan of parasites. Each of the two forces builds a heart that reflects the nature of its clan. Therefore there are two hearts: the heart built by the clan of parasites, the evil heart; and the heart built by the clan of producers, the good heart.

  “It is our actions that show which side we are on and therefore what kind of heart we are building. For our hands, our organs, our bodies, our energy are like a sharp sword. This sword, in the hands of a producer, can cultivate, make food grow, and can defend the cultivators so that the blessings and the fruits of their sweat is not wrested from them; and the same sword, in the hands of a parasite, can be used to destroy the crops or to deny producers the fruits of their industry.

  “In the hands of the producer the sword of fire has the capacity to do good. And in the hands of the parasite the sword of fire has the capacity to do evil. Its actions illustrate both the evil and the good nature of the sword of fire. The same is true of the labor of our bodies.

  “Gĩkũyũ once said: The leopard did not know how to scratch; it was taught. True, but it always had the claws and the power to scratch. Does it scratch to kill its children? Or does it scratch to kill its enemies?

  “One thing is certain. What is done cannot be undone. Our actions are the bricks that we use to construct either a good or an evil heart.