Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  Vinjinia started phoning up doctors she knew to be discreet, telling them only that her husband was low in spirit and occasionally scratched his face, omitting even the slightest reference to the mirror and Tajirika’s loss of speech. When some suggested that she bring him to their clinics she would quickly downplay the seriousness of his malady. Others said flat out that they could not prescribe a cure over the phone; a few suggested over-the-counter drugs to relieve the itching and depression. The drugs did not work.

  What was she to do? As the days passed without her husband getting any better, Vinjinia felt a need to share her secret with others.

  “I think he has been bewitched,” Vinjinia one day told Nyawlra.

  They were now into the second week as coworkers. The rider had come back all right, but for Vinjinia and Nyawlra the news of endless queues and motorized madness was depressing. Gacirü and Gaclgua had gone back to school, and Nyawlra missed the storytelling sessions.

  “You see, a lot of people are envious of his success,” Vinjinia went on, “and particularly his appointment to head Marching to Heaven. Now he is not even eating well. If you saw him you would not recognize him, he has lost so much weight.”

  “Who would want to cast an evil spell on him?” Nyawlra asked, curious as to whom Vinjinia considered an enemy.

  “I don’t know; maybe any of those so-called businessmen who came here to make his acquaintance. They don’t come around anymore. Why? Perhaps as soon as they knew their evil had worked, they stopped.”

  “But how do you know he is bewitched?” Nyawlra asked, recalling that Vinjinia was a devout Christian. “Did he do, eat, or wear anything unusual before or during his illness?”

  Vinjinia remembered the glove he wore on one hand, which was very strange because even when he ate or went to bed he never took it off.

  “Yes,” Vinjinia said, after wondering to what extent she should confide in Nyawlra. “Since the Marching to Heaven craze began, my husband has taken to wearing a glove on his right hand. He never takes it off, and so he never washes the hand.”

  “Remove the glove,” Nyawlra suggested.

  That night, after making sure that he was asleep, Vinjinia removed the glove from Tajirika’s hand, and it stank so badly that she threw it to the floor. Was the stench attributable to the bewitchment? What if she herself became a victim of the same dark powers? she suddenly thought in fright. She was determined to avoid further contact with the glove or with the hand that wore it. But how could she allow these powers to dictate what she should or should not touch in her own house, including her husband’s hand? She brought her Bible, kept it near, and felt more courageous. She examined the hand. There were small crusts of dirt under the long fingernails. She thought of trimming the nails, washing the hand, and throwing the glove into the garbage bag, but this would have been tantamount to discarding evidence. She picked up the glove from the floor and put it in a drawer.

  The following day she told Nyawlra that she was now sure that her husband had been bewitched by the evil placed inside the glove.

  “Why in the glove?” Nyawlra asked. “And why did the evil not strike when he first wore it?”

  “You have a point there,” Vinjinia said. “The bewitchment must have happened as they shook hands in this very office or slipped in the envelopes with the money. He became ill soon after counting, well, touching the money with the glove.”

  “Money? Was there a lot?” Nyawlra asked, not only to keep the conversation alive but also to learn the actual figure.

  “You should see how much!” Vinjinia said with pride and fear, looking around to make sure that the police officers guarding the yard were not within hearing distance. “Each of three sacks was full of notes, and no note was worth less than a hundred Burls.”

  “Three sacks bulging tight with notes?” Nyawlra asked histrionically.

  “So you can see why not everybody might be happy for him,” Vinjinia said. “The evildoers could have been any of those who brought the sacks of money”

  “Yes, I see,” Nyawlra said, a little tired of the talk of sorcery. “What you now need is a good witch doctor,” Nyawlra added, in part to shock the good Christian, but it was she, Nyawlra, who was shocked by Vinjinia’s impassivity.

  “The only problem,” said Vinjinia in a matter-of-fact tone, “is that I have no idea where to find a witch doctor.”

  It was clear that she imagined that Nyawlra would be as clueless as she was, but she was wrong.

  An idea struck Nyawlra. Why had she not thought of it earlier? There was, after all, the Wizard of the Crow! She was amused by the thought of Tajirika seeking a cure from the very person he had humiliated.

  “As for witch doctors,” Nyawlra said, “I hear there is a new one in town. The Wizard of the Crow!”

  “Where is he to be found? I mean, where is his shrine?”

  “Santalucia. Southern.”

  “Southern Santalucia?” Vinjinia screamed with genuine horror. “You mean the southern slums where the poo … poo … people …” she stammered, a little confused, remembering that Nyawlra lived somewhere in Santalucia.

  Vinjinia seemed sincerely appalled by the prospect of visiting a slumyard. But the more she recalled the stench of the glove and Tajirika’s elongated nails encrusted with dirt, the more she realized that she had to control her squeamishness about such places. Her husband’s illness was getting worse. She didn’t see that she had any alternative but to pay the Wizard of the Crow a visit.

  “I am a faithful member of All Saints Cathedral, and I know what they would think of me if they suspected or found out that I have had dealings with witch doctors,” she said. “I don’t want to be excommunicated or become like Maritha and Mariko, the subject of weekly tales. But just now there is no place I would not go in search of a cure. Where does one find this Wizard of the Crow? And please, Nyawlra, not a word of this to anybody” Vinjinia pleaded.

  10

  What? Tajirika is to come to me to be cured? No, no, I can’t deal with that, Kamltl responded instinctively. The humiliation he had suffered at the hands of this man had scarred him badly, and he feared that the sight of his tormentor would inflame him further.

  “I take the trouble to bring my boss to you so you can take his money” Nyawlra reasoned with him, “and all you can say is no? Why else would I lure him here, knowing that the malady is hopeless? All you need do is look at him, shower him with saliva, sputter some mumbo jumbo, send him home, and pocket his money”

  He wanted no part of this, Kamltl insisted.

  “I will bring him in the dark; there is no danger of his shadow crossing yours,” Nyawlra said, and with that the tension between them broke as they burst out laughing.

  It was while laughing that Kamltl suddenly felt possessed of an emotion so powerful that it almost made him tremble. Bevenge. Good luck was bringing his enemy to his door for him to exact the sweetest vengeance. Strange that the prospect of evil had excited him more than the thought of doing good.

  Kamltl told Nyawlra nothing of this, for he did not want her to dissuade him from his course of action. Besides, he wanted to enjoy the unfolding of his scheme by himself. He imagined possible encounters with Tajirika, wondering how best to set his plan in motion. Before Tajirika’s arrival, Kamltl would make a billboard, NO CURE TODAY: FOR CURE COME TOMORROW, and plant it nearby. He would then take Tajirika down memory lane by testing him on his English literacy.

  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: the words from the Bible had never rung truer for Kamltl.

  “All right, let him come,” Kamltl told Nyawlra enigmatically.

  11

  Vinjinia drove her black Mercedes-Benz to the Santalucia shopping center where Nyawlra was waiting. They had agreed to meet very early in the morning so as to get to the shrine of the Wizard of the Crow before the arrival of other clients. Although Nyawlra herself had suggested the shopping center, she acted as if she were unfamiliar with this section of Santalucia.

 
Nyawlra sat in the passenger seat and looked around at Tajirika. She was expecting a sickly-looking person, but the Tajirika she saw did not seem ill at all. His belly had shrunk a little so his dark suit fit him better. He sat in the backseat of the car, its windows shuttered. Sometimes he would cast an eye in her direction, but when Nyawlra tried to meet his gaze it was clear that he was in a world of his own and did not recognize her. So she concentrated on directing Vinjinia to the shrine.

  It was then that she noticed that Vinjinia was driving without the aid of rearview and side-view mirrors. When Vinjinia needed to turn, she stuck her neck out her window or sought Nyawlra’s assistance to see if the coast was clear. Nyawlra was about to tell her that the mirrors were not properly adjusted, but the evil glance that Vinjinia cast in her direction froze the words on her lips.

  Though she understood, it did not lessen the terror at being in a car in a part of the town the driver hardly knew. Fortunately, the traffic at that hour of the morning was light, though Nyawlra was relieved when they got to her street. She showed Vinjinia where to park, a few houses from her own, and they walked the rest of the way.

  On entering the house, they heard the voice of a man they could not see order them to seat the patient in a chair facing a small window in the wall between the waiting room and the inner chamber. Nyawlra and Vinjinia sat close by. For Nyawlra, this business of pretending to be a stranger in her own house tested all her patience and acting skills.

  While Kamltl could see the entire body of the person before him, the patient could see only the face of the Wizard of the Crow, but Fajirika did not seem to care whether or not there was a face; in fact, he did not seem to take in any of his surroundings. He just stared into space, completely silent, his hands cupping his chin. His stillness was now and then interrupted by a seizure of ifs.

  Fhe man must be living in terror of his own silence, Kamrö thought, and witnessing this misery Kamltl felt sorry for him: all thought of vengeance vanished. Kamltl was now preoccupied with the challenge posed by the malady: What was this that had made voluble Tajirika a prisoner of silence? And why if and if only}

  12

  Of all the cases he had faced, Kamltl would say afterward, Tajirika’s would rank among the most difficult. As a diviner, Kamltl worked out the nature of a problem by how a client answered questions. But Fajirika could not and did not answer any questions. It was as if he were deaf, his mind in another world and distrustful of the one he now inhabited. It was frustrating, but Kamltl kept on whispering to himself, To save one’s patients, one must keep one’s patience.

  The Wizard of the Crow asked Vinjinia to sit next to her husband. This took her aback, for she thought a sorcerer divined without questions. She was hesitant about revealing the more embarrassing details of Tajirika’s story. A few omissions will do, she told herself. But she heard the Wizard of the Crow echoing her unspoken words. No omissions, the Wizard of the Crow told her, looking her straight in the eye. If she needed help, she had to tell him the whole truth, he told her firmly but gently. How quickly this wizard has read my mind, Vinjinia thought to herself, a little scared; she was largely forthright in her retelling.

  She recounted how Tajirika had come home one night with three sacks full of Burl notes, how he had sat at a table in the living room and counted the money, bill by bill, jotting down subtotals, every now and then jumping up for joy. He had called on her to keep him company as he did his figures. He had told her that this was just the beginning of better days to come. She recalled very clearly Tajirika stretching his legs on the table, leaning against the armchair, and talking as if in a dream, repeating the words this is only a beginning of things to come over and over.

  My dear Vinjinia, you have no idea, he had said. My appointment as the chair of Marching to Heaven was announced this morning, and by the evening I had come into possession of all this. The morrow would bring even more money, for there were many more people coming to see him. If in just one day I have harvested this much and Marching to Heaven has not even begun, when the Global Bank releases its loans and the construction actually begins, my money will go through the roof. By the time all is said and done, I will be the richest man in Aburlria, the richest man in Africa, probably the richest man in the whole world, and I will be in a position to have anything I want, except … except … and it was then that he started coughing uncontrollably, not finishing the thought. He rushed to the bathroom in that state and stayed for a long time. Vinjinia told of how worried she was and how she had gone to the bathroom to check on him. Well, she found him staring at himself in the mirror, repeating the word if. This continued day after day, and she had decided to remove all mirrors from the house. As the days went by, Tajirika’s seizures became increasingly worse, and now he sat staring into space as the wizard saw him now … That is all, she said, rather abruptly.

  Nyawlra compared this version of the story to what Vinjinia had told her in the office and found some telling discrepancies. In the first version, Vinjinia had not mentioned anything about Tajirika’s obsession with being the richest man in Aburlria, Africa, and the whole world. She had not mentioned that Tajirika had started his ifs on the same night he took the money home and counted it. She had told her that the ifs had seized him the morning after.

  Vinjinia waited, her heart pounding, for a response from the Wizard of the Crow. She had wanted to tell him everything, but she could not bring herself to talk about how Tajirika had scratched his face, the real reason for the removal of the mirrors.

  “Have you told me the whole truth?” the Wizard of the Crow asked.

  “Yes,” Vinjinia replied. He might be able to bring down even crows from the sky, but there was no way he would know what she had left untold, she reasoned.

  “It is all the same,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “My divining mirror will reveal to me whatever you may have left unsaid. Now turn his face this way and make him look directly at this opening.”

  Again Vinjinia felt her heart racing. How did he know that she had not told all? Maybe I should confess … but before she had completed her thought, a mirror had already replaced the face of the Wizard of the Crow at the aperture.

  The effect of the mirror on Tajirika was immediate. He woke up as from a dream, stared at the mirror, and started scratching his face. Vinjinia let out a frightened cry. She lurched forward, grabbed him by the waist, and began pulling him away from the mirror. Tears flowed down her cheeks in a mixture of fear for him and embarrassment at not having been straight with the Wizard of the Crow. Tajirika planted his feet firmly to the ground, his hands reaching out for the mirror. Vinjinia struggled with her husband to no avail: his hands remained outstretched toward the mirror and he groaned time and again. If. If’only!

  If something were not clearly the matter with Tajirika, Nyawlra would have burst out laughing, for the scene reminded her of cartoons she had seen on television. When the Wizard of the Crow withdrew the mirror, both husband and wife fell to the floor, as if Tajirika had been released from his bewitchment. After struggling to free herself from the entanglement, Vinjinia managed to put him back into the chair. She was panting from the effort, even as Tajirika was weeping freely, like a child whose favorite candy had been snatched away. As he heaved, he kept on saying, If! If! If!

  “I am sorry I forgot to tell you the bit about his scratching himself,” she said to the wizard without much conviction, “but this weeping is something new,” she added.

  “Let that not trouble your heart.”

  She was relieved that the Wizard of the Crow had shown understanding and did not dwell on the sin of omission; this drew her closer to him and she made a sincere effort to catch every word from his lips.

  The Wizard of the Crow started talking as if thinking aloud in their presence. His voice was round and soft, and it soothed and carried the listener along. Nyawlra felt her heart drawn to the voice almost as if she had never heard it before. To Vinjinia the voice felt particularly powerful because it was disembodi
ed. Even Tajirika responded to its soothing tone, gradually quieting down, and, for the first time in a long while, he seemed to be listening to someone. Vinjinia noticed this change in him and was even more grateful to the mysterious voice.

  “… that is where we diviners come in,” the Wizard of the Crow went on, as if continuing talking to Vinjinia. “Words are the food, body, mirror, and sound of thought. Do you now see the danger of words that want to come out but are unable to do so? You want to vomit and the mess gets stuck in your throat—you might even choke to death. Your husband’s illness is not yet fatal because its cure is not beyond the reach of our powers. Woman, identifying a sickness is the first step on the road to recovery and I think the problem with your husband can be seen in the difference between his ifs. They describe negative and positive wishes. Woman, your husband’s thoughts are stuck in his head so that his wishes cannot be denied or fulfilled. His wishes are shards of words stuck in his throat. His enemies lie within him, and they want him to choke over his unvoiced wishes …”

  Vinjinia felt a mixture of dread and amazement.

  “So what are we going to do about it?” she asked the wizard.

  “I do not charge for divining ills, but the cure may require one to dig deep in one’s pockets.”

  “How much will it cost to get these thoughts unstuck?”

  “How much is his life worth?” asked the Wizard of the Crow, who, as Kamltl, had decided that though he would not seek vengeance he would certainly relieve Tajirika of the three bags of bribe money.