“John!” Nyawlra cried out, startled.
Kaniürü stood a few feet from the new board, almost on the same spot Kamltl had stood the day before, pondering his humiliation. Kaniürü read the new ad aloud: TEMPA JOBS: APPLY IN PERSON!
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“Let’s go for coffee at Mars Cafe,” he said.
“I don’t like coffee,” she said.
“Have tea, a milk shake, soda. Anything. I have some news for you.”
“I can read newspapers for myself. I listen to the radio.”
“This is no ordinary news. It’s something you ought to know.”
Nyawlra turned the matter over in her mind, though she tried her best to seem uninterested in whatever Kaniürü had to tell her. She yawned and sighed as if reluctantly giving in to his pestering.
“Okay I’ll be right back,” she said. “In fact, I’ll meet you at Mars.”
She headed back to the office, carrying the old signboard to put it back in storage.
The door was locked. She dug into one of her pockets and fetched the keys. She opened the door and froze in terror. She was dumbstruck as she stood staring at a gun pointed at her. She closed her eyes, awaiting the worst.
“Oh, it’s you?” Tajirika said, moving the gun away from her. “I thought someone was trying to break in. I thought I told you to go home?”
“My handbag,” she said in a trembling voice. “I have just finished putting up the new sign,” she added in a daze, pointing at the old signboard. “I was returning for my handbag.”
“Good. Help me carry some sisal bags to my car.”
The bags, packed tight with Burl banknotes, were heavy. Tajirika dragged two and Nyawlra one to the boot of his cream-colored Mercedes-Benz.
She watched the car merge with others along the road before disappearing altogether. Then the reality of what might have been struck her with full force. She sat down, weak at the knees, to recover her composure before going to meet Kaniürü at the Mars Cafe.
14
The Mars Cafe was well known in Eldares for its low-priced but quality offerings of tea, coffee, cocoa, milk shakes, ice cream, breads, cakes, sandwiches, and soft drinks. Many people used it as a rendezvous because its owner, who went by the name Gautama, did not seem to mind customers sitting and talking for long stretches after consuming what they had ordered. But the cafe was probably better known for its celebration of space exploration through the decorations on the walls and Gautama’s dedicated vivacity.
Over the years, the cafe’s name had changed to reflect landmark moments. It had variously been called Sputnik, Vostok, and Moon-apollo. Gautama especially liked Moonapollo because it not only alluded to a Greek deity but also rhymed with Marco Polo, who had sojourned to the Orient, where space voyages were first imagined in folklore. He often cited, as proof of the Asian origin of the space race, ancient Chinese astronomers who were among the first to focus on supernova. But he moved on to Mir Cafe and the International Space Station Cafe before settling on Mars Cafe, which he vowed to keep until humans landed on Mars, for he believed that the Red Planet held the secrets of the origins of life and the universe. He wanted the name of the cafe to reflect the eternal human quest for truth, freedom, and knowledge. So its walls were papered with newspaper and magazine cuttings featuring not only rockets and other spacecraft and stations but also space travelers. So Yuri Gagarin and Aleksei Leonov could be found side by side with Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and so on.
But though he always looked dreamy when talking about space, Gautama was very down to earth in his cafe and was attentive to his customers. He now watched Kaniürü enter alone, and he hoped to engage him in small talk about the universe. But when Kaniürü told him that he would wait to place his order until his guest arrived, Gautama retreated to the counter and his mental wanderings. Kaniürü kept looking at his watch, wondering if once again Nyawlra had given him the slip. He planned to wait a few more minutes before leaving and would most likely go to her office the next day to ask her why she had stood him up. He felt calmer about having an excuse to visit Nyawlra’s workplace and inspect Tajirika’s properties.
Just then somebody touched him on the shoulder, and, thinking that it was Nyawlra, Kaniürü turned around quickly. His beaming face turned ugly when he saw that it was yet another beggar. He became even more irritated when he saw that the man was crippled. Upon hearing his chant, Help the poor, these legs were broken during the war of independence, Kaniürü lost his patience altogether. He pushed the cripple away and screamed at him, Go away! How dare you touch me with your filthy fingers! He yelled at the poor beggar so incessantly that Gautama, forced out of his spaciness by the commotion, interceded on behalf of the intruder. Gautama gave him a few coins, asked him not to disturb his customers, and guided him to the door.
“I just want a cup of tea and a piece of cake,” Nyawlra shouted to Gautama as she walked in and sat at the table. “Why did you want us to meet?” she asked brusquely.
“I was passing by and I thought I would drop in on you,” Kaniürü told her, and by the look on her face he knew that she knew that he was not telling the truth. “So that’s where you work?”
“Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone?”
“Yes, but we need not be enemies.”
“I don’t want your friendship.”
“I wasn’t insisting that we be friends.”
“Listen. I have no time to waste, quibbling over words.”
“Nor I. I was simply saying that even if people part ways, they need not pass one another without so much as a wave of the hand.”
“What do you want?”
“I just want you to know that I still love you.”
“You are wasting your time and mine trying to pick up spilled water. If you start that up again, I am leaving.”
“What else do you want me to talk about?”
“I didn’t ask you out. Why not sing about how great it feels to be a youthwing of His Royal Mightiness?” Nyawlra said, barely hiding her sarcasm.
“Look, you are quite right to be critical of some of the pillars of the Party, pretenders who are out to ruin and discredit our country, such as those in favor of Marching to Heaven! The verdict was in long ago when the children of Israel first attempted the Tower of Babel.”
“Rumor has it that you drew up the plan, or rather the artist’s impression. Why this about-face against your baby?”
He tried not to wince, recalling the humiliation he had suffered at the birthday celebrations, revived by the woman he most wanted to impress with his new connections to power and privilege. He kept quiet, dwelling on the origins of the whole fiasco.
It all began when Machokali gave a talk at the polytechnic where Kaniürü taught. On learning that there was an art department, the minister wondered aloud whether its students could be trusted to breathe life into the lifeless drawing of an architect? If you can, then call on me in my office, he said, just that, an invitation so vague that many people correctly took it for the usual rhetorical challenges by politicians. The minister himself had forgotten all about it when Kaniürü went to his office a few days later, abruptly allowing that, yes, it could be done, and he was there to volunteer his services. It took Machokali a while to grasp what the man was talking about until Kaniürü reminded him of his visit to the polytechnic. Oh, that, the minister said. You mean you can look at a two-dimensional plan and give a visual impression in three dimensions? You know, with the color of life and all that? “It is not easy, but it can be done.” Not of course by every Tom, Dick, and Harry, but he, John Kaniürü, had a degree in art and art history from the University of Eldares and had even studied a little architecture. An artistic rendering was no big deal.
Kaniürü was melting inside at the prospect of working with so famous a minister when the first obstacle to happiness presented itself. After describing in general what he wanted from an artist, Machokali instructed one of his trusted aides to show
Kaniürü the drawing. “Look at it only once,” he had said. “The rest I leave to your imagination.” Kaniürü did not then know the significance of the drawing that would serve as inspiration for his art, but when he found himself working under lock and key, being body searched every time he left the room, he figured it was something important. And when he learned that it was somehow connected with the Ruler’s birthday celebration, he gave the aide a note begging the minister to acknowledge his contribution to the national effort. The aide was reassuring; not only would his name be mentioned but he might even be introduced to the Ruler himself, or at least be asked to come forward so the people could see him. These words made Kaniürü thank the minister’s aide profusely, calling him “my friend,” while ignoring all the hints about greasing the palm of the messenger. The aide was compelled to wonder, What kind of person is this who does not seem to know that the carrier of a message must eat? Peeved by the meanness of art teachers, the aide later told the minister that the teacher had said that his name should not be mentioned anywhere, so selfless was he. Unaware of this treachery, Kaniürü for several days considered how best to grandstand in public. He would sit far back so that when his name was called he would have to walk through the throng all the way to the platform. And even if asked simply to stand up, he would be looked at by a thousand heads turning toward him. But instead of being the object of everybody’s grateful attention, he attracted only angry gestures from those who sat near him, and a warning about keeping the peace from a cop who added injury to insult by threatening to blow off his nose with a gun. How could he ever forgive Machokali for treating him like dirt?
Even as the bitterness of the moment came back to him, he controlled himself so as not to show weakness before the woman he was trying to woo back.
He was a little relieved to learn that Nyawlra had not been present at the ceremony, and, as truth is in the eyes of the interpreter, he tried to make her see things through his eyes.
“Believe me, I painted that madness at Machokali’s insistence. He gave me, or rather his aides gave me a copy of the architectural design and they wanted an artistic rendition of Marching to Heaven. To be very frank, I thought that the whole project was stupid and that’s why I insisted on the minister’s not mentioning my name.”
“I admire your modesty,” Nyawlra said. “Humility is certainly more becoming than humiliation.”
“Spare me your mockery. Let me tell you something. There are still many pillars of the Buler’s Party that are as solid as a rock. For instance, Minister Silver Sikiokuu. He, too, can see through this nonsense, and that’s why he came up with the brilliant idea of a personal spaceship modeled on some of those we see on these walls. What has been done is doable. Imagine the Buler ruling space. Sikiokuu is a political genius, a genuine visionary.”
“This is getting interesting. Who owns you, Minister Sikiokuu or His Boyal Mightiness? Whose youthwinger are you after all?”
“I’m not ashamed to say that I belong to the Buler’s Party. Total loyalty. One hundred percent. Were it not for his wise leadership, where would we all be? Imagine the disaster if the likes of Machokali led this country! To be one of the youthwings of the Buler is not a partisan act; it is a patriotic duty. Even university professors and PhDs are enlisting. Girls like you are now needed. The Girl-Youth.”
“I am a woman, a divorcee.”
“I just wanted to make sure that you knew that in the Ruler’s Youth there is no discrimination based on gender or age. Some of our most vocal members are women. A few professors are more than fifty years old. Sikiokuu himself is head of the youthwing movement; he is a genuine man of the people. He aims to make his youth happy. He wants women like you to join …”
“Go back to your Sikiokuu with his rabbit ears and tell him that Nyawlra does not bow to political bosses.”
“What is the difference? You now work for Tajirika, a loyal follower of Machokali.”
“Yes, but I am not employed as a political activist. I am an ordinary employee with an everyday job.”
“What is so ordinary about the ever-present queue outside your offices these days?”
“Didn’t you tell me just now that you happened to be passing by? So you have been here the whole day? And by the way, when are you going to London to get a bigger nose?” Nyawlra asked, and laughed as she tried to imagine how his nose would look if even larger. “Machokali has had his eyes enlarged, Sikiokuu his ears, and Big Ben Mambo his mouth, or rather his tongue. Who better than you to sniff out enemies of His Royal Mightiness?”
“Nyawlra, listen to me: You are right. I do pass by here from time to time. But not because of Tajirika. Neither Tajirika nor his business brought me here today. It is the prompting of my heart—please don’t go. Stay and hear me out; you don’t even know what I am about to say. I want you. I find it difficult, almost impossible, to stay away from you. But I won’t intrude on your privacy, even if I knew where you lived. But I am free to be out and about in public. Yesterday I was walking by this road and I saw you with another man, engaged in a deep conversation.”
“Am I not allowed to speak to whomever I wish?”
“But that is my point. The man you were talking to is no ordinary man.”
“How terribly interesting.”
“Please hear me out and judge for yourself. Both of you were sitting not very far from where I found you replacing the signboard. After you parted company, I had an urge to follow you just to say hello, but there was something about the man that made me want to stay and observe him further. He sat there for a long time as if waiting for somebody or as if he had nowhere else to go. Eventually he did walk down this street, and I followed him. At Santamaria or somewhere there he stopped and stood against a wall as if he had lost his way. He was soon on the road again until he reached the Ruler’s Square near Paradise. And do you know what he did? He walked into a public toilet …”
Nyawlra could not help laughing aloud. His tone was dead serious. What was so strange about people going to public toilets? But she recalled how horribly filthy they were and was almost ready to concede his concern.
“Laugh all you want, but I assure you that this is no laughing matter. I saw him with my own eyes go into the toilet; I stood guard at the entrance, and only a beggar dressed in rags came out. He didn’t. I am not holding anything back; I am telling you the whole truth. After a long while, I thought to relieve myself and went in to see what was happening. There was nobody there, not a soul. The man had vanished into thin air.”
“An alien. Back to Mars,” she said, trying to make light of the whole thing.
“This is no joke. Do you know the man well?”
“No,” she said, yawning as if she was bored with Kaniürü. “Or, I should say, if the person you are talking about and the one I have in mind are the same, I can tell you truthfully that I don’t know much about him beyond the fact that he wandered into our office looking for work.”
She would have failed a lie detector test, because even as she said that her anxiety was mounting. How was Kamltl? Had something happened to him? Was Kaniürü holding back something?
“Whether you want to hear it or not, I care about you and would not want you to come to an evil end because of bad company. I am not superstitious, but that man is no human. He might be a djinn or an ogre.”
“An ogre, and not in the government?” Nyawlra asked with forced laughter. “I can defend myself.”
She grabbed her handbag and stood up to go. She thought of Kamltl, wondering where and how he had spent his day. In addition to his travails, now he had to put up with an ex-husband on his trail. She felt weary, but at the thought of harm coming to Kamltl something flashed across her heart, and she did not know whether to be sad or happy.
“Look,” she told Kaniürü. “Even if you come across someone plotting to kill me, keep it to yourself. I want nothing from you. Don’t pretend that you are acting on my behalf.”
He watched her walk to the counter to pa
y for the tea and cake. She left without once looking back. He sat there gloomy at not having been taken seriously, yet he was so sure of what he had seen. Could his eyes have deceived him?
“No. The man is human, yet more than human,” he murmured to himself, still puzzled by the mystery he had witnessed outside the gates of Paradise.
15
Constable Arigaigai Gathere had used the same words when he told the story of what had happened to him the day the Wizard of the Crow had ordered him to leave the haunted house. Strange. First he talks to me with the soft voice of a woman. Then out of the same mouth comes a bellowing masculine sound ordering me to go away and wash my feet, which had defiled the playground of his magic powers. That man? I swear, true! Haki ya Mungu, that man, he is human yet more than human. For A.C. the words conveyed not malice but awe, respect, and admiration, for he told his listeners, “All that I am, all that I have now, I owe to the craft of the Wizard of the Crow.
“How could I not obey his first words of command to me? Without any hesitation, I ran all the way to my place, where I washed my feet and hands over and over again, and within the hour I was back in Santalucia. Now I was careful not to touch the door or stand too close to it. The door opened all by itself as if to invite me in, and I entered the sacred grounds of his living space. Then I heard another command: stand in front of the small window. The window looked like that of a confessional in a Catholic church, except it had no lattice and one could clearly see his face and eyes. But what eyes? They were more like balls of fire.
“Your heart is a little weary’ the voice said.
“Yes! Yes!’ I said quickly.
“ Weighed down by many burdens?’
“Yes! Yes!’
“ A particular burden that brings you to the Wizard of the Crow?’
“His voice was round, soft, and soothing, so different from before that I could not tell whether he was making a statement or asking a question.
“You have spoken my thoughts exactly’ I told him. You see, I have been in the police force for many years, and no matter how hard I work I have never been promoted. Wizard of the Crow, I am sure I have enemies who are hindering me through magic’
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