Of Faustian contracts, goons and the small voice we find it cool to ignore

‎Residents protest along the Gilgil–Ol Kalou road at Chokereria after masked, armed men  fired shots into the air and assaulted locals following an incident involving a DCP campaign vehicle. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

We live in the age of goons. By goons, I do not mean that rugged, unemployed, desperate youth who is approached by a shadowy figure who runs errands for a self-conceited politician and is asked, for a few thousand shillings, to disrupt and cause mayhem at a political rival’s campaign rally.

No, let us face the facts about who a goon really is. For the purposes of this discussion, a goon is any man or woman who trades their conscience, values, principles or better judgement to another person for survival, and often to do things they would otherwise never do if no payment was placed on the table.

A goon, therefore, is not just that young man who wreaks havoc while wearing a mask, hops onto a boda boda and melts into the shadows.

My definition of a goon also includes that suited and bespectacled man of the cloth, or senior corporate or public officer, who has no qualms about ignoring that small inner voice that silently screams against evil plans, all for the gift of cash, the privilege of flying in a chopper, or some other flight of vanity, to do what they know their own conscience would ordinarily warn against.

Allow me to strip this back to its Faustian roots. It all goes back to 16th-century Germany, and specifically the tale of Johann Faust, which also happens to be the ultimate warning against the dangers of unrestrained human ambition. The tale, immortalised for us by Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is a gothic masterpiece of intellectual vanity, spiritual despair and ultimate damnation.

In a vaulted study in Wittenberg, Germany, surrounded by decaying parchments, human skulls and ticking mechanical clocks, sat Dr Faust. The man understood philosophy, medicine, theology and law as one knows the back of their hand. Bored that there was nothing more to learn in the world, Dr Faust felt, and yielded to, the itch to transcend human limitations. So, on that dark, tempestuous night, he turned his back on God and opened a heavy, leather-bound grimoire of black magic.

Dr Faust then traced a magical circle on his stone floor and uttered a series of blasphemous Latin incantations. Then, in a flash of freezing cold, out of the shadows emerged the fearful image of Mephistopheles, a high-ranking demon of the underworld. No, he did not have horns, but appeared instead in the seemingly benign countenance of a Franciscan friar.

The demon cautioned Dr Faust about the horrors of hell but, blinded by his own pride, the greatest mind of his age turned up his nose at the warnings. He told Mephistopheles that he wanted a meeting with Lucifer himself, as he had a deal to propose.

To clinch the deal, Lucifer – through Mephistopheles – demanded a ritual contract. So, for 24 years, the bargain had it, Mephistopheles would be at the beck and call of Dr Faust. The good doctor would wield absolute power, enjoy youthful looks and even be capable of invisible flight. Then, at exactly midnight of the last day of the 24th year, Dr Faust’s eternal soul would be forfeited to Lucifer, to be tortured in hell for eternity.

Faust was then asked to slice his own arm and write his signature using his own warm blood. As he pressed the quill to the parchment, his blood congealed into a thick crust, as if that inner voice he had initially ignored was returning to warn him one last time. But Faust warmed his arm over a fire, smiled and signed his soul away.

His soul thus mortgaged, Faust was like a spirit among men. He travelled across Europe by supernatural means, performing wonders before emperors. He could even summon the spirits of the ancient world.

However, as the clock ticked away, a festering rot engulfed his chest. Strangely, he now found infinite power incredibly boring. It did not help that his wealth could not buy him genuine love, and his previously magical feats were now nothing more than hollow tricks.

On his final night, Faust was tortured to no end by the ticking of the clock in his study. At 11 o’clock, just one hour from his fate, Faust fell to his knees in terror. He looked up at the night sky and wept, begging the heavens for even half a drop of Christ’s mercy.

Thunder struck at exactly midnight and, amidst the smell of sulphur and the howling of a thousand damned souls, hideous, shapeless demons dragged the screaming, weeping scholar down into the fiery abyss. The next morning, his students found his mangled body strewn across the stone floor, the scene of a debt fully collected. End of story.

And so we tweak the old biblical question: what does it profit a man to pocket a few thousand shillings and trade his conscience to the Mephistopheles of political violence? I do not ask this question only of the youths hurling stones at people they do not even know, at the behest of someone whose name they do not know beyond the generosity of a few notes handed over by another man, probably with a covered face. No, this question also goes to the kind of turncoat intellectuals and men of the cloth who, in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Matigari, have perfected the art of reading from the book of political parroting.

Whenever you look at the horrifying trajectory our politics is taking, you are reminded of the ‘Devil’s Feast’ in Ngũgĩ’s Devil on the Cross, where crooked elites gather in a cave for a competition to determine who has exploited the hoi polloi the most. It also reminds you of ‘the Man’ in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, where refusing to sell one’s soul is widely considered foolish.

Perhaps the biggest question is this: when the 11th hour strikes, will you still be proud of the decision you made to pocket a few thousand shillings for Mephistopheles? No, forget 24 years from today. Indeed, Sh3,000 to Sh5,000 can hardly fill a big carrier bag at a supermarket? So, do you still feel proud you injured someone for a crime you cannot tell a few hours later when your Sh5,000 has evaporated into a cloud of fast-gathering economic inflation?

No, we cannot always blame the politicians and their crooked ways. Perhaps they are merely applying the only tricks that work on us. They are our mirror. Perhaps it is not they who pressed the quill to the parchment for a blood contract. It is the men and women in the mirror who complain about goons, the looting of public coffers and violent politics, yet cannot vote for someone until a few notes have been pushed into their greedily greasy palms.