“With all my heart I shouted at the foreigners: Now we shall see who is who, you fucking bastards! I’ll show you that even here we have men who have been initiated into the modern art of stealing and robbing the workers! You foreigners will have to go back home and rape your own mothers, and leave me to toy with my mother’s thighs!
“I refused to take any more jobs. But because of the weakness of my position, I had to go to the foreign-owned banks to negotiate a loan—oh, yes—so that I could buy fodder for the workers and still be left with enough to buy the machine for milking their sweat.
“I set up a factory for manufacturing cooking oil from wild spinach. Ah, listen to me in silence. That was the beginning of all my woes: but it was also the beginning of my knowledge of the way the world works. Now, when I went out to sell the oil, I found the market completely flooded with cooking oil imported by foreign-owned companies. And to add insult to injury, they cut the price of their oil. I saw quite clearly that I, Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ, was on the verge of bankruptcy. I sold the factory and all the machinery. It was bought by foreigners.
“Then I started a factory for manufacturing skin-lightening creams. My reasoning was this: if foreigners are growing fat by wrecking the skins of black people, why can’t I do likewise? The story was the same as before. I found that creams to destroy black people’s skins had been poured on to the market at throw-away prices. I saw ruin stare me in the face. Again I sold out to foreigners.
“And yet I set up another factory, this time for manufacturing rubber condoms—you know what I mean, sheaths for men to wear when they don’t want a girl to become pregnant. In this case, our own customs got in the way. Our men don’t like covering their things with those rubber contraptions. They like feeling flesh against flesh. As for the Europeans and Asians, they preferred imported ones, ones manufactured abroad by companies in their own countries.
“This enterprise too was devoured by foreigners.
“So, as I stand here, I can promise you that I tried to make a success of many different types of manufacturing. But no matter what I attempted, I would find that the foreign manufacturing firms and their local allies had ganged up against me. If I sold my product at five shillings, they would sell theirs at three shillings, and of course all the buyers would flock to buy their goods. Sometimes the foreigners would ensure that certain types of machinery were not sold to me. At other times they would sell me outdated machinery, and even then the machines would take years to arrive in this country. Sometimes I couldn’t get spare parts, or they would be delayed, or they would suddenly vanish in transit and my factory would grind to a halt.
“It was this that made me realize that foreigners are not ready to relinquish their hold on our manufacturing industries—fed, of course, by the sweat of our workers. For a worker’s sweat is the source of all profit. I thought that I ought to give up manufacturing for a while. But that was only a temporary setback. To slip is not to fall.
“I went back into the service of foreigners. I started up a wholesale business—well, a business to sell things manufactured by foreigners. It is not a bad business. For when a man transfers something from here to there and adds nothing in the process, not a single drop of his own sweat, he’s able to enjoy a few goodies. Today I am a wholesaler and importer of fabrics, hard liquor, shoes, secondhand clothes and pills to prevent the poor from producing babies like rats and rabbits.
“Today I, son of Mũkiraaĩ, am still in the service of the foreign owners of industries. The foreigners still monopolize the whole field of the theft of the sweat of our workers. But I have never abandoned my ambition to drive them out of the arena.
“Therefore, Mr. Chairman, when I got an invitation to this gathering and a letter asking me to spread the news of this great competition to judge thieves and their plans for increasing theft and robbery in this land, I was delirious with joy.
“Now, listen carefully. I am going to tell you a secret. All these years I, Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ, have kept this very important secret to myself. It’s a secret that could allow us to soar above Japanese, American, British, French, German, Italian and Danish thieves, the whole of the capitalist Western world, in the art of theft and robbery. It is a secret the mastery of which could break the chains that have bound us to foreigners. Now I’m going to share the secret with you because if my plan is to work effectively, it will require complete unity among those of us who seek to build true native capitalism, free from foreign ideologies.
“The secret is this. Our country has iron ore. Our country has workers in metal. The skills needed to smelt iron ore and turn it into pig iron has been with us for generations. Before imperialism these were the very skills that were marshalled to make spears, swords, hoes and different types of ring. But this knowledge did not spread for two reasons. The guild of metal workers tended to keep their knowledge to themselves, for in those days the small class of people who know the delicious taste of the sweat and blood of workers gathered into factories had not yet emerged. When the foreigners came here, they deliberately suppressed this native knowledge of metal working to make us buy things made abroad and thus help the growth of their industries.
“So today I say this. Let us unite, big and small, to develop our own machine tools, because the sweat and the blood of our own people is in cheap and endless supply.
“Don’t be deceived by anybody into thinking that we have no iron ore. There is no natural resource that is not available in this country, oil included. But even if we had no large supply of iron ore, we could still develop what in English has been called maintenance technology, yaani, the knowledge of turning used iron into usable smelted iron. What do you think has permitted Japan to survive as an industrial power?
“The sweat of our workers would enable us to manufacture machine tools to make pins, razor blades, scissors, matchets, hoes, axes, basins, water containers, tins and corrugated iron sheets, motor vehicles, tractors, steam and diesel engines, ships, airplanes, spears, swords, guns, bombs, missiles, missile-launching rockets or rockets for launching people into space—in short, to make for ourselves all the goods that are now made by foreigners. Then we would see if we too could not benefit from modern science and technology.
“Think about it, good people: Kenya’s own millionaires, billionaires, multi-millionaires, multi-billionaires, Kenya’s own industrial capitalists, like Japan’s . . . and all through iron ore or maintenance technology washed clean by the sweat and blood of the workers; What more could you want?
“National robbers, national thieves, I have shown you the way. Now let every thief among us take home his talents and use them on his own mother.
“Who gets the crown of glory then? Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ! For he has offered us words of wisdom, both natural and learned. I didn’t go to school for nothing. I want to end with the following battle cry: every robber should go home and rob his own mother! That’s true democracy and equality of nations! Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
A dream. It was surely a dream in broad daylight. Gatuĩria pinched his thigh to see if he could feel pain to prove that it was not all a dream. The pinch hurt. No, it was not a dream. But even so, Gatuĩria could not quite believe that what he was seeing with his own eyes was really there. A man may well dream he is pinching himself and that he is feeling pain. Or he may dream that he is dying, and he may even see himself being buried and actually going to Heaven or to Hell.
Gatuĩria looked over at Warĩĩnga. He stretched out his hand, and took Warĩĩnga’s fingers, and pressed them gently, and he felt that Warĩĩnga was really there, in the flesh. Then Gatuĩria believed that he was awake and that the cave was not the illusion of a malaria-ridden patient.
Even today, Gatuĩria still remembers with a shudder the chaos that erupted in the cave following the testimony of Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ. It’s true that some of the guests did clap him,
but the majority gnashed their teeth and shouted and roared with rage. Women too. A small group ululated for him, but the vast majority cried out in protest.
2
The leader of the foreign delegation, the one who carried the sign of the USA on his crown, was the first to speak out. The noise and the chaos subsided as the people strained to catch every word.
“Mr. Chairman, speaking on my own behalf and on behalf of the other foreign experts, I wish to express my horror at the abuse and insults that have been hurled at us by Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ. We did not come here for insults and abuse. No, we came here to find ways of strengthening the partnership between American, European, and Japanese thieves and robbers and the thieves and robbers from the developing world, that is from those countries that have been given their own flags very recently. We who come from the developed world have had many years’ experience of modern theft and robbery. I might also remind you that we are the owners of the houses and stores and granaries that contain all the money that has ever been snatched from the peoples of the world. You can see for yourselves that even our suits are made of bank notes. Today money is the ruler of all industry and commerce. Money is the field marshal of all the forces of theft and robbery on Earth. Money is supreme. Money rules the world. We came here to see if we could acquaint a few of you with our secrets so that you could become the eyes and ears of the international community of thieves and robbers here in your country. But we did not know that we were coming to listen to the speeches of the politically naive, the speeches of thieves and robbers who dream of walking before they have even learned to crawl, the speeches of thieves and robbers who are envious of plunder that has already been stolen and stored by those who have been at the game for a long time. In coming here we thought that we were visiting people who understood that all the thieves and robbers of the world belong to the same age-group, the same family, the same nationality, and that they share the same ideology. We believe in freedom, the freedom that allows one to rob and to steal according to one’s abilities. That’s what we call personal initiative and individual enterprise. And that’s why we have always stated that we belong to the Free World, a world where there are absolutely no barriers to stealing from others. Why, then, does Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ want to cause divisions among us? What makes him say that there are two kinds of theft? Theft is theft. And why does he say that you should build your own missiles and bombs and rockets? Don’t you believe that we are capable of guarding and protecting your theft and ours, as we have always done in South Korea, Brazil, Israel and South Africa? We are eating and drinking from the same table and yet you have no faith in us. Now, because of the abusive language and the insults we have had to endure at the hands of Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ, we have decided that we shall not wait until the end of the feast. We are leaving now, and we are going to take with us all the gifts we brought with us and leave you Kenyans to scramble for the iron ore Mwĩreri was so enthusiastic about.”
The leader of the foreign delegation sat down.
3
The atmosphere in the cave grew cold. Many of the robbers felt their impending loss in their bones. They all turned bitter eyes toward Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ.
The master of ceremonies was the one who saved the day again. He mounted the platform and spoke with a heart full of repentance, begging the foreigners not to take any notice of what had just been said because there was not a single thief or robber in the whole cave who was not searching for ways and means of improving his relationship with such important guests, to the greater glory of the system of theft and robbery on Earth. Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ’s call to the thieves and robbers of every country to be self-reliant and to stand aloof in a corner, patting their stomachs alone, was just adolescent talk.
The master of ceremonies then swore by all the gods that there was not a single local thief or robber present who supported the ideas of Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ. He reminded the foreign guests about the parable with which he himself had opened the proceedings that very morning. . . . The flag of Independence can be likened unto a man traveling unto a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. . . .
The master of ceremonies paused in the middle of the parable, and he turned toward the foreign thieves, and, smiling ingratiatingly with his golden teeth, he declared: “Distinguished guests, we are your slaves. You have come back to see what we have done with the talents you bequeathed to us in grateful recognition of the services we rendered you in suppressing those of our people who used to call themselves freedom fighters. That is good. I would like to remind you that even today we have continued to hoodwink our people into believing that you did actually leave the country. That’s why we don’t call you foreigners, or imperialists, or white robbers. We call you our friends. Therefore I beseech you, please resume your seats and be patient, so that you can hear the stories of all the other man-eaters. Don’t worry about Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ. We shall take care of him. His fate will be decided here today. I hope that this apology is adequate. What remains is the apology of actions.”
He sat down. The leader of the foreign delegation of thieves and robbers accepted his apology and said that they were content to wait for the apology of actions. He said: Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done. Asante.
The thunderous applause that broke out in the cave almost brought down the ceiling and the four walls.
4
Gatuĩria held Warĩĩnga’s hand. He still felt as if he were in a dream. Warĩĩnga squeezed his hand. They sat in silence, both engrossed in their own thoughts, but each feeling that were he or she to let go of the other’s hand, they would both drown in the darkness of the cave.
Gatuĩria was not able to pursue his ideas to their logical conclusion. An idea would come into his head and dance about there for a while, then it would be driven out by a new thought. And the new thought would leap about for a time before it too was driven out by another. His relentless desire for a suitable theme for his music seemed to have evaporated. What worried him most now were thoughts about Warĩĩnga’s past troubles. But as he turned over Warĩĩnga’s story in his mind, the knowledge that Wangarĩ had gone to fetch the police and Mũturi the workers intruded and bothered him. What would happen when all the forces met in the cave? The noise and the chaos generated by the testimony of Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ also troubled him. And he didn’t even condemn the system of theft and robbery. All he said was that each thief should steal from those in his own country. Suppose, then, a man like Mũturi should come here and reject the whole system of theft and robbery?
And suddenly Gatuĩria felt like telling Warĩĩnga that they should flee, for his mind’s eye was seeing images that made him tremble. And at the center of these images was Mwaũra.
Gatuĩria thought he saw Mwaũra look at him with eyes full of ravenous greed. Then he saw that it was not Mwaũra alone who looked at him in that manner. All the people around him wore the same expression. Whenever one of the thieves yawned, Gatuĩria thought he saw his teeth transformed into blood-soaked fangs that were turned toward where he and Warĩĩnga sat. He heard a voice whisper to him: These are the eaters of human flesh; these are the drinkers of human blood; these are the modern Nding’ũri’s; take this girl and flee this place.
But another part of him urged him not to flee, to wait until the very end so that in future they would not have to listen to yarns about how the feast had ended. For if Gatuĩria had been told that there were still professional murderers and eaters of human flesh in the world, he would not have believed it. So the old man from Bahati, Nakuru, had really been telling him stories of modern-day ogres?
Gatuĩria shook his head to stop himself from pursuing this line of thought. He stared hard at the platform to prevent himself from looking at the terrifying pictures he saw on the faces of the people around him.
He started thinking about Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ, comparing his testimony with th
e story he had told them the evening before about the man who was going to a far country and left five talents, two talents and one talent to his servants, and who, after he had stayed away for some time, returned and called his servants to him. . . .
And the one who had received . . . talents came and testified. . . .
The Testimony of Nditika wa Ngũũnji
Nditika wa Ngũũnji was very fat. His head was huge, like a mountain. His belly hung over his belt, big and arrogant. His eyes were the size of two large red electric bulbs, and it looked as if they had been placed on his face by a Creator impatient to get on with another job. His hair was parted in the middle, so that the hair on either side of the parting looked like two ridges facing each other on either side of a tarmac road. He had on a black suit. The jacket had tails cut in the shape of the wings of the big green and blue flies that are normally found in pit latrines or among rotting rubbish. His shirt had frills all down the front. He was wearing a black bow tie. His eyes rolled in time to his words. His hands rested on his stomach and he patted it gently, as if beseeching it not to stick out toward the people with such arrogance.
“I don’t have much to say. I am not going to get excited counting degrees that can find no better transport than a matatũ. We shall leave insulting foreigners to the wretched who have nothing to boast about in front of well fed eaters except their hatred of foreigners.
“I am called Ngũũnji wa Nditika—sorry, Nditika wa Ngũũnji. As for my wife, I have only one. My girlfriends? I belong to them, ears, horns and all. I suffer from two diseases: I can never get enough of that or of food. Good food makes for a fine, healthy body, and the smooth thighs of young girls make for a fine, healthy soul.