Devil on the Cross

The narrator of the story of Jacinta, The Gĩcaandĩ Player, starts of by saying that the “Devil appeared to Jacinta Warĩĩnga one Sunday on a golf course in the town of Ilmorog in Iciciri District” (4). However, the narrator also says that this is not the beginning of the story, and for that he will need to return to when Warĩĩnga’s troubles began, when she worked as a secretary for the offices of the Champion Construction Company in Nairobi, Kenya.

The narrative flashes back to a Friday when Warĩĩnga is fired for rejecting the sexual advances of her employer, Boss Kĩhara. That same evening, Warĩĩnga also gets dumped by her boyfriend, John Kĩmwana, after he accused her of being the boss’s mistress.

The next morning, Warĩĩnga’s landlord visits the apartment to tell her he is increasing her rent. When Warĩĩnga refuses to pay the extra money, the landlord returns with three “goons” in dark sunglasses, who throw her belongings out onto the street and taunt her. One of the goons gives her a business card on which is written, “We are the Devil’s Angels: Private Businessmen. Make the slightest move to take this matter to the authorities, and we shall issue you with a single ticket to God’s kingdom or Satan’s—a one-way ticket to Heaven or Hell” (5).

Feeling depressed about her circumstances, Warĩĩnga decides to return to her parents’ home in Ilmorog. It is then revealed that Warĩĩnga is convinced that she is ugly due to her dark complexion (which she covers in whitening creams), her straightened hair, which is splitting, and her stained teeth. Warĩĩnga is also convinced that her personal appearance is the root of all her problems. However, outside of her insecurities, Warĩĩnga is characterized as warm, pleasant, and attractive. As she walks along the road toward the bus stop, Warĩĩnga impulsively considers death by suicide but is instructed not to go through with it by a mysterious voice in her head. Dizzy, she sits in the doorway of a local salon, which is where she has a vision of a nightmare she used to have as a student.

In the dream, Warĩĩnga witnesses a crowd of people propelling the Devil, dressed in a silk suit and with seven horns, two mouths, and red skin, toward a cross hanging impossibly in the air. Accusing the Devil of various crimes, the people then crucify him on the cross and leave, singing of victory. After three days, another group of people lift the Devil down from the cross and beseech him for a portion of his cunning. Then, their bellies begin to swell as if pregnant, and the group walks toward Warĩĩnga, “stroking their large bellies, which had now inherited all the evils of this world” (8).

Warĩĩnga comes to herself on the road and realizes that she had been walking to go say goodbye to John Kĩmwana. She stares around and locks eyes with the young man who’d helped her sit down on the steps, where she’d had her vision. The man returns her handbag to her, then tells her about the corruption in Nairobi and the rest of the country due to colonialism. Warĩĩnga relates the hypothetical story of a woman named Kareendi, who becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby after the hypothetical father rejects her. She gives the baby to her mother and grandmother to raise while she pursues her education at secretarial school. Despite the constant sexual harassment, Kareendi finds a job and a boyfriend with progressive, contemporary values. Kareendi’s new boss begins to harass her, more and more aggressively each week, until eventually he attempts to rape her following her rejection of his advances. Kareendi manages to fight him off but is fired the next day for doing so. At home, she tells her boyfriend about the attempted rape, but her boyfriend blames her for what happened and breaks up with her over it. Warĩĩnga asks the man what Kareendi should do in that situation, and how she might ever be happy, with the implication that the story is really about herself.

The man tells her that her story affected him greatly, and she tells him that she is heading home to Ilmorog. As she leaves, the man hands her a card, reading:

The Devil’s Feast! Come and See for Yourself—A Devil-Sponsored Competition To Choose Seven Experts in Theft and Robbery. Plenty of Prizes! Try Your Luck. Competition to Choose the Seven Cleverest Thieves and Robbers in Ilmorog. Prizes Galore! Hell’s Angels Band in Attendance! Signed: Satan The King of Hell c/o Thieves’ and Robbers’ Den Ilmorog Golden Heights (26).

Shocked by the card, Warĩĩnga feels an unexplainable excitement.

Eventually, Warĩĩnga is able to catch a matatũ, a term for privately owned minibusses used as shared taxis over long distances, headed for Ilmorog. The matatũ is notably decrepit, looking as if it “was the very first motor vehicle to have been made on Earth” (28). The driver, Mwaũra, uses the matatũ’s age as a selling point since his only goal in his life is to make as much money as possible, to the point where he had previously killed a man over a five-shilling debt.

Warĩĩnga enters Mwaũra’s matatũ along with another passenger wearing blue overalls, who sits directly across from Warĩĩnga. Mwaũra feels upset that he was only able to get two passengers for the trip to Ilmorog, but goes anyway, since he might be able to add some extra fares along the way. Just as he pulls off, a young man with a suitcase runs up to the vehicle and climbs in to join the original three. From his suitcase, Warĩĩnga learns the man’s name is Mr. Gatuĩria, and he works in the African Studies department of the University of Nairobi. The matatũ eventually picks up two other passengers, but as they drive west, the crowd thins, and travelers become less frequent.

One of the later passengers, a woman in a kitenge garment and holding a basket, abruptly tells Mwaũra that she can’t afford the fare for the ride and asks for his kindness in letting her ride for free. Mwaũra pulls the minibus over suddenly, almost throwing out another passenger, and tells the woman to get out. However, the other passengers, out of compassion, agree to split the woman’s fare between them. The woman tells them that her name is Wangarĩ and that she’ll pay them back once they reach Ilmorog, but the other passengers won’t hear of it. The passengers argue over the Mau Mau rebellion and contemporary politics; while the man in the overalls, whose name is Mũturi, believes that social organization and cooperation were at their peak during those times fighting for independence, Wangarĩ argues that corruption was baked in from the beginning.

Wangarĩ tells the other passengers the story of why she feels so distraught over the nature of Kenyan society. She’d earlier purchased a cow on loan, but after the cow’s death, she was unable to pay the loan back. To cover her debts, Wangarĩ decided to go to Nairobi to find a job. Shocked by the scale of the city, Wangarĩ went into random buildings asking for a job but was unable to find work. When she eventually asked the same hotel twice for a job, they called the police and had her arrested for attempted theft. Wangarĩ slept in a jail cell for three nights, after which, on the morning of the bus ride, she was taken to court and officially charged with vagrancy. However, the judge decided not to send her to jail, instead fining her due to her cooperation with the authorities. This whole ordeal reminds Wangarĩ of the time under colonial occupation, when Kenyans were forced to carry passports around with them to prove their identities to the European authorities. Wangarĩ is now on the bus to Ilmorog so that she can report the locations of local thieves to the authorities so that she can avoid going to jail.

The conversation on the bus ride continues for a long while, as the characters discuss imperialism and vagrancy laws, and they occasionally burst into song. The driver Mwaũra claims that he can adapt to any situation and that he’s equally at home with both God and the Devil. When the other passengers question whether he has any firm beliefs at all, Mwaũra tells a few anecdotes illustrating the impermanence of the soul and human behavior. In contrast, Mũturi, the other passenger who’d gotten onto the bus with Wangarĩ, argues that the soul is the only feature that distinguishes people from animals and allows them to do and create great things. Mwaũra responds by saying that the discussion was regarding good and evil, and that Mũturi’s argument does not necessarily mean souls are either good or bad. Mũturi argues that humans all have “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” and that what distinguishes good from evil, God from the Devil, are the actions people take (55). He implores Mwaũra to accept God and choose the path of life, but Mwaũra says that he chose the path of death a long time ago, then he asks the passengers rhetorically, “Where do you think we are heading now?” (56).

Warĩĩnga tries to follow the thread of this conversation but keeps getting distracted by thoughts of her recent troubles—her firing, her breakup, her near death by suicide, the invitation to the Devil’s feast, and the robbery competition. Gatuĩria asks whether the other passengers believe in a literal God and a literal Devil who are alive in the world. Mwaũra responds by saying that he doesn’t know, but that “Business is my temple, and money is my God” (58). Mũturi says that he believes in the literal God and Devil, but that they are aspects of human nature rather than corporeal beings. Gatuĩria explains his work as a researcher in African culture at the University of Nairobi and the term “cultural imperialism,” which makes foreigners the arbiters of what is and is not Kenyan. Gatuĩria says that he is part of a group at the university devoted to returning to the traditional ways of knowing before European imperialism. Gatuĩria himself is a composer and searches obsessively for the music that would best represent the Kenyan people, but after years of searching is unable to find “the bottom of the root I was after” (62).

Gatuĩria goes on to tell three stories, all of which center around ogres and greed, with the conclusion of each being related to the folly of trying to possess material goods. He relates that he wants to tell the same stories in music and describes the composition of voices and instruments he would need to do so. However, unable to believe in ogres, which he feels is making his music worse, Gatuĩria tries to reason his way through the issue, but he finds that he doesn’t believe in spirits or creatures from another world. In the midst of these issues, Gatuĩria finds a card like the one found by Warĩĩnga, inviting him to attend the Devil’s Feast in Ilmorog. Warĩĩnga shrieks and collapses out of fright, before being revived by the other passengers.

The passengers continue to discuss the likelihood of a real Devil existing on Earth, each demonstrating their perspective through riddles and puzzles. Mwaũra tells stories of strange and disturbing events in his life, eventually saying that he would attend the Devil’s feast “for I would never be satisfied with other people’s accounts of it” (75). Mũturi claims that people who act evilly are encouraged by the Devil, exemplified by Mũturi’s abusive former employers, the Champion Construction Company, which also happens to be the company that fired Warĩĩnga; he goes on to say that he would attend the Devil’s feast in order to challenge the Devil personally. Gatuĩria says that he will be attending the Devil’s feast in order to determine whether he actually exists or not. The passengers wonder openly about why Warĩĩnga is suddenly asking all these questions, and Warĩĩnga tells them the story of how the man saved her on the road and gave her the invitation.

A passenger who has not yet spoken, the man in the dark glasses, suddenly asks for Gatuĩria and Warĩĩnga to let him examine their invitations. He takes out his own invitation, which is worded differently from the other two, eliminating any mention of the Devil but keeping the competition for theft and robbery. The man in the dark glasses claims that the Devil invitations are printed by people opposed to the competition and who want to ruin the feast, speculating that it was done by university students. When questioned, the man says that his name is Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ. He tells the passengers his life story, beginning with his impressive education at local universities and eventually Harvard, where he trained as an economist. Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ claims that the previous conversation had by the passengers is the “kind of talk that is ruining this country” and is communistic (82). He argues that the feast was not organized by Satan, but instead is intended to commemorate foreign visitors from an organization in the West called the International Organization of Thieves and Robbers.

Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ goes on to say that university students have “now devised ways of discrediting theft and robbery before they even know what modern theft and robbery is” (82). To Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ, human nature is inherently unequal, and modern theft and robbery a symptoms of progress. However, his views on the world are challenged by Mũturi, who asks whether he has any evidence for his claims, but Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ claims his opinion is self-evident. He also says that rich people are the heroes of Kenya because they have shown they can “beat foreign thieves and robbers when it comes to grabbing money and property” (84). He then invites the entire matatũ to the competition.

Wangarĩ responds angrily to Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ’s comparison of workers to pigs and the other passengers to peasants, arguing that the wealth that Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ is in favor of stealing is created by the working people of the country. Mũturi, too, responds with anger, telling Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ to trust the masses of the country rather than the rich elite. However, Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ dismisses their complaints, claiming that his thoughts are reinforced by the Bible. As he talks, Mũturi picks up a piece of paper that Warĩĩnga had earlier dropped, putting it into his pocket without looking at it.