Devil on the Cross

  Gatuĩria has now accomplished the musical feat. And he has also won Warĩĩnga’s heart. When Warĩĩnga accepted his proposal, he sent a letter to his father immediately, telling him that after years of wandering he, Gatuĩria, would now like to return, bringing home the darling of his heart and the fruits of his research in music.

  And his father promptly replied: “My only son, your decision to come back home and ask your father’s blessing is a fine one. My extensive property still cries out for a manager with modern know-how. Come back home quickly, so that I can have you fitted out with the best robes and a ring to put on your hand, and so that a fatted calf can be slaughtered for you. We will eat and be merry together, for you were dead and are alive again; you were lost and are now found. Bring home your intended, so that our bodies and souls can rejoice together. God has hearkened unto the cry of our hearts!”

  “And so tomorrow the fatted calf is to be killed for you,” Warĩĩnga tells Gatuĩria.

  “More than one,” Gatuĩria replies, laughing. “His letter suggests that he is taking me for the prodigal son who went into a far country and there wasted his substance on riotous living, music and prostitutes. I am sure he has been deep in prayer, beseeching God that I may return home and stop throwing the pearls of my life before swine!”

  “What if they should find out that you haven’t stopped casting your precious pearls before swine?”

  “I’m not afraid. When he sees what I’ve brought him, his heart will break with sheer joy.”

  “Over me or the score?” Warĩĩnga asks, with laughter in her eyes.

  “How can you compare your own beauty with mere sheets of music!” Gatuĩria demands, pretending to be a little angry. “You don’t seem to have any idea. Since the Devil’s feast, it’s as if you have been transfigured, body and soul. Your skin has a depth of blackness that is softer and more tender than the most expensive perfume oil. Your dark eyes shine more brightly than the stars at night. Your cheeks are like two fruits riper than the blackberry. Your hair is so black and soft and smooth that all men feel like sheltering from the sun in its shade. Your voice is sweeter than the sound of a thousand and one musical instruments. Warĩĩnga, my love, you are the music of my soul.”

  His words suddenly startle Warĩĩnga. A shadow crosses her face and laughter disappears from her eyes. How can words she heard two years ago now spring from Gatuĩria’s own lips? Words spoken in a dream two years ago. . . . Warĩĩnga does not want to tell Gatuĩria about the fear that has suddenly seized her, and she does not want Gatuĩria to go on about her beauty. She tries to divert the conversation into different channels.

  “Tell me about the oratorio,” Warĩĩnga says. “To tell the truth, I’d never thought that any music could take a whole two years to compose.”

  “Music that tells the story of one’s country? Music to be played by an orchestra of hundreds of instruments and sung by hundreds of human voices? And remember, you have to indicate where each instrument and each voice comes in. My friend, there is music and the music; there is song and the song! In fact, if I hadn’t met you and gazed into your eyes, and if love hadn’t given my heart wings, I don’t know if I could ever have completed this score. But when I locked myself away in my study, I could see your lovely face beckoning me, urging me, telling me: Finish it, my love, so that we can go away together. The gift that will be waiting for you when you have completed the task is very special. . . .”

  And because of that, Gatuĩria had decided that his score would be Warĩĩnga’s engagement ring. He had decided that on completing the score, he would offer it to Warĩĩnga in front of his own parents at Nakuru. He had also decided that the first performance would take place on their wedding night. Tomorrow would be the first stage toward the union of their hearts: during tomorrow’s ceremony Gatuĩria intended to offer her the two hundred sheets of music, the fruits of two years of the labor of his heart. . . .

  “I asked you about the music and not about my face,” Warĩĩnga tells Gatuĩria, still trying to change the subject.

  Gatuĩria is turning over in his mind all the problems he faced as he composed the music. He wonders how to explain a work that runs to two hundred pages in a handful of words. How can a work that took two years to complete be summed up into two minutes?

  In his mind, of course, Gatuĩria can reconstruct the whole process of mixing the various voices and the various sounds in harmony: how and where all the voices meet; how and where they part, each voice taking its own separate path; and finally how and where they come together again, the various voices floating in harmony like the Thĩrĩrĩka River flowing through flat plains toward the sea, all the voices blending into each other like the colors of the rainbow. The same is true of the instruments. In his mind, Gatuĩria can hear where the instruments meet to create a single sound; where the instruments part; and where each instrument carries the theme on its own. But most clearly Gatuĩria can hear the voices and the instruments joining together in a single chorus of harmony, sometimes lifting the hearts of the audience to peaks of joy, at other times hurling their hearts into depths of sorrow. Gatuĩria can even visualize the audience surging out of the concert hall, angry at those who sold the soul of the nation to foreigners and babbling with joy at the deeds of those who rescued the soul of the nation from foreign slavery. Gatuĩria hopes above all that his music will inspire people with patriotic love for Kenya.

  All these things are seething in Gatuĩria’s mind, each sound image chased by other sound images, as if they were all fighting for dominance in the arena of Gatuĩria’s thoughts and imagination. As he steers the red Toyota toward Ilmorog, Gatuĩria can hear the voices and the sounds of men and instruments calling him. . . .

  First Movement

  Voices from the past, before the coming of British imperialism

  The gĩcaandĩ calabash

  The one-stringed violin

  Drum, flutes

  Rattles, horns

  Stringed instruments

  Wind instruments

  Percussion instruments

  Dancing

  Our women

  Clearing forests

  Asking riddles

  Our men

  Clearing the bush

  Telling stories

  Our children

  Digging

  Praying

  Young men

  Breaking up clods of clay

  Settling disputes

  Young women

  Taking part in ritual ceremonies

  Boys

  Planting

  Girls

  Cultivating

  Birth

  The crowd

  Protecting millet from the birds

  Second birth

  The masses

  Initiation

  Harvesting

  Marriages

  Grazing

  Burials

  Building houses

  Working with iron

  Making pottery

  And the sound of the feet of young men

  At the cattle kraal,

  Defending the wealth of the land

  From foreign foes,

  To prevent them from eating

  That which has been produced by others.


  The sounds of spears and shields.

  The voices of patriots.

  Second Movement

  Foreign voices

  Voices of imperialism

  Drums

  Trumpets

  After our land

  Foreigners and their armies

  Their aims:

  After our labor

  Our wealth

  After slaves

  Our herds

  After all the shadows of the land

  Our harvest

  Our industries

  Our creations

  The struggle against the foreign forces.

  The voices of patriots.

  Horn trumpets

  Drums

  Flutes

  The sound of the foreign forces retreating.

  Patriotic songs of victory.

  Songs of Waiyaki, Koitalel, Me Kitilili,

  Gakuunju . . .

  Third Movement

  Foreign voices, oily, smooth with hypocrisy

  Drums

  Flutes

  Piano, organ

  Christian choirs

  They secure loyalty from:

  Foreigners

  Their aims:

  Priests

  Wealth

  Chiefs

  Educators

  The means:

  Bishops

  Administrators

  Divide and rule

  Feudalists

  Armed soldiers

  Capture their souls

  Sellers of the soul of the nation

  The imperialist flag

  The struggle of cultures.

  People taken captives.

  The nation divided.

  Revolutionary activities banned.

  Some young men have hung up their arms;

  Now they have no weapons.

  Voices of the soldiers of imperialism.

  The sounds of chains on our people,

  Chains on hands,

  Chains on legs.

  Fourth Movement

  The voices of slavery

  Piano

  Guitar

  Saxophones

  Drums and trumpets

  The voices of the people picking tea.

  The voices of the people picking coffee.

  The voices of the people picking cotton.

  The voices of the people harvesting wheat.

  The voices of workers in a factory.

  Fifth Movement

  Sounds and voices of a new struggle,

  To rescue the soul of the nation.

  Horns

  Drums

  Flutes

  Voices of rebirth.

  Voices of our heroes.

  Voices of Mau Mau.

  Voices of revolution.

  Voices of revolutionary unity of workers and peasants . . .

  • • •

  Gatuĩria is trying to explain to Warĩĩnga the movement of the different voice and sounds. He is trying to explain to Warĩĩnga the kinds of instrument that might be made to represent the workers and peasants as they rescue the soul of the nation from imperialist slavery. He is trying to explain the difficulties of writing down African music, for the notation of African music has not yet been sufficiently developed and differentiated from that of European music.

  And suddenly Gatuĩria notices that Warĩĩnga is not listening. “What’s the matter?” he asks.

  “You mentioned workers and peasants, and it reminded me of Wangarĩ and Mũturi and . . . and. . . .”

  “The student leader?”

  “Oh, yes, and the student leader.”

  “Do you ever forget the Trinity?” Gatuĩria asks.

  “The Holy Trinity of the worker, the peasant, the patriot,” Warĩĩnga replies, pauses and then continues: “No, no, I have never forgotten them. I have never forgotten their court appearance. God, I shall never forget the trial of the Holy Trinity. . . .”

  4

  Virtually the whole of Ilmorog had attended the trial. The Ilmorog courtroom was filled to capacity with two types of listener. On the one side were people like Kĩhaahu wa Gatheeca, Gĩtutu wa Gataangũrũ, Nditika wa Ngũũnji, Kĩmeendeeri wa Kanyuanjii and many others who had attended the Devil’s feast. On the other side was the crowd of workers, peasants, students, petty traders and so on. The judge was a white man, and he wore a blood-red gown. The court clerk scribbled things down as he interpreted.

  In the dock sat Mũturi, Wangarĩ and the student leader, guarded by prison warders and policemen. The three were charged with the offense of disturbing the public peace at Ilmorog Golf Course during a meeting of some private businessmen and, in the process, causing the death of seven persons.

  Gatuĩria and Warĩĩnga had been summoned to Ilmorog police station, and after being questioned, they had been asked if they would act as witnesses for the prosecution. They refused. The prosecution’s witnesses now consisted of the likes of Gĩtutu and Kĩhaahu and the police. But the principal witness for the prosecution was Robin Mwaũra, owner-driver of Matatũ Matata Model T Ford, registration number MMM 333.

  Mwaũra told the court that on a certain Saturday he picked up two passengers, Wangarĩ and Mũturi, in Nairobi in his car. But right from the start, Mwaũra could see that Wangarĩ and Mũturi were not trustworthy. Wangarĩ had even refused to pay the fare, beating her breast and claiming that everything in Kenya should be provided free. Mũturi was clearly in league with Wangarĩ, for it was he who had paid her fare. Mũturi and Wangarĩ had talked all the way from Nairobi to Ilmorog, and they had talked of nothing but the unity of workers and peasants and the need for the kind of communism advocated by university students. He himself, with his own ears, had heard Wangarĩ bragging about how she was going to ruin the feast at the cave by deceiving the Nairobi and Ilmorog police into believing that it was a gathering of thieves and robbers. Mwaũra also heard Mũturi boasting that he would rally the workers and peasants and destroy the feast in revenge for being dismissed from his job by the directors of the Champion Construction Company.

  Mwaũra then told the court that these two were clearly in league with a certain Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ. Mwĩreri had been silent for most of the journey. But the silence was pure hypocrisy because toward the journey’s end, it was he who had given Wangarĩ and Mũturi invitations to the feast. When Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ saw that the disturbance he had planned with the two accused was about to erupt, he had very cleverly left the cave and rented Mwaũra’s matatũ for a night journey back to his home, but unfortunately the vehicle had overturned at Kĩneeniĩ. Mwĩreri had died on the spot. The vehicle was a write-off. He, Mwaũra, had had a very narrow escape. . . .

  Mwaũra was in the middle of his story when a note was handed to the prosecutor. The prosecutor read the note, then he walked up to the bench and whispered something in the judge’s ear. The judge immediately announced that the charges against the accused had been withdrawn, and that therefore Mũturi, Wangarĩ and the student leader were now free. People did not even wait to hear under what Section of the Penal Code the accused had been released. Workers, peasants and students shouted with joy.

  Warĩĩnga ran outside the courtroom to embrace Wangarĩ, Mũturi and the
student leader.

  She almost fell to the ground with shock. The whole courtroom was completely surrounded by soldiers armed with guns and shields and batons. When Wangarĩ and Mũturi and the student stepped outside the courtroom, they were met with guns and chains.

  It was only two weeks later that people learned that Mũturi and Wangarĩ and the student leader had been detained—and a month after that, Mwaũra bought three brand-new vehicles, which he converted into matatũs. The company he formed was called the Matatũ Matata Matamu Modern Transport Company. The master of ceremonies was one of the directors of the company; the other was Kĩmeendeeri wa Kanyuanjii. . . .

  5

  “Are they still alive?” Warĩĩnga asks Gatuĩria. “Sometimes I feel that they were probably taken to Ngong Hills.”

  “Who knows?” Gatuĩria says, still steering the red Toyota. “Let’s wait for 12 December. They might be released along with the ordinary convicts.”

  “Amen!” Warĩĩnga says, with all her heart. “That will be the day when real music will sound in my soul!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1

  Our Ilmorog, it appears, does not change much. Two whole years after the Devil’s feast, Ilmorog manifested the same divisions as before. The Golden Heights had gone on expanding. Mansions with walls decorated with candles in gold candelabra and Persian carpets on the floors were still being built with the wealth that local tycoons had in excess. The same was true of beds made out of silver and gold: this had become so common and normal that nobody would have thought that the other residents of the area would even be surprised at it. Foreign companies, especially those from the USA, Canada, West Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Japan, had increased. The car was a good measure of the increased dominance of foreign property over our lives. (The truth of the matter is that today there is not a single make of car—Toyota, Datsun, Mazda, Honda, Subaru, Ford, Cadillac, Vauhxhall, Volvo, Fiat, Peugeot, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes Benz, BMW and many others—you will not find spinning along Ilmorog’s roads.) Foreign finance houses and stores—the ones that call themselves insurance companies and banks—that gathered in people’s money had virtually overrun Ilmorog. Two American banks, from Chicago and New York, were the latest to build stores, money-trading bases, in this heartland of wealth.