Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  “There is nothing I would not give to free him from what is killing him inside. Wizard of the Crow! Smoke out his enemies! Pursue them to the very gates of Hell.”

  “Well, it is up to you to decide what you want to do. The bewitching is in the very money he has received. Bring the three bags of Burl notes here so that we can find out where the evil is hidden. Go home and think about it. Come back tomorrow or any day you want. Then we can talk about my fee for releasing your husband’s wishes.”

  The authenticity of the wizard convinced Vinjinia, but his putting into words what she herself had been thinking, that the evil resided in the bags of money, made her believe in his powers even more.

  She wanted Tajirika healed that very morning, she told him. She promised to return with the three money bags and more to cover whatever fee he might charge for rooting out the evil.

  The Wizard of the Crow told her to take her patient with her and hurry back before other clients arrived. Or, better still, they should leave the young maiden behind to keep their places warm. He was a first come, first served wizard.

  13

  “Where were we?”

  Vinjinia suddenly applied brakes and the car skidded to the side of the road. Fortunately, no other cars were near them. She could not believe her ears. Was this her husband talking? She dared not turn her face.

  “What did you say?” Vinjinia asked, just to make sure that she had heard right.

  “I am asking you—where were we?” Tajirika asked again, like a person coming out of a deep sleep.

  When she glanced at him over her shoulder, his face did not tell her much. The voice was decidedly his before the ifs.

  “So you are well again? Praise the Lord,” she said, not trying to hide her joy. “We have been to the shrine of the Wizard of the Crow!” she added, as if they had visited a family doctor.

  “What? The shrine of a sorcerer?” he asked in a sleepy voice.

  Vinjinia decided not to hide anything from him and told him that he had been seriously ill since the night he brought home three bags of Burls. The illness had perplexed ordinary physicians and she, Vinjinia, was now glad that she had brought him to the healer’s shrine because even before the Wizard of the Crow had done his business, Tajirika was already on the mend, talking for the first time in a long while.

  “Who has been spreading rumors that I am ill?” Tajirika said, interrupting her. “If I have been ill, then know that now I am quite well, thank you.”

  “But we have to go back,” Vinjinia said.

  “For what?” he asked with mounting irritation.

  “To bring him the three bags of money. The evil is in the bags.”

  Tajirika felt like climbing over the front seat and giving Vinjinia a few slaps to the face.

  “This is why I have always said that African women are gullible. You would actually let a sorcerer ensnare you with his tales? I cannot believe that you, a grown-up, the mother of my children, a churchgoer, were about to take three big bags of my money to a sorcerer!”

  “You decide what you want to do. All I wanted was for you to get well, even if it meant my visiting places that I would not ordinarily go. All I wanted was for you to be well enough to go back to work as before. Think of the thousands of Burls you have lost since becoming ill!”

  “So you thought you would add to the loss by giving my money to a witch doctor?”

  “I don’t deserve your insults. If you feel fine, then let’s not go back to the shrine. We don’t owe him anything. He has not administered his cure.”

  As soon as they got home, Tajirika insisted on being shown where Vinjinia had kept the three bags of money. She pointed to the strong room and left feeling wearied by his lack of interest in what had happened to him and chafed by his lack of gratitude.

  He opened the bags one by one just to make sure that all the bills were there. After sewing the sacks shut, he lifted them in turn, as if weighing them, before placing them side by side. He then kneeled before the one in the middle and stretched out his arms as if gathering them to himself, forming a cross with his body. Then he tried to close his eyes as if in prayer, but they would not close. He tried to say something. Nothing would come out. He tried to force words out. Then suddenly the coughing came back, and the ifs and if only‘s.

  Vinjinia rushed to where he was kneeling. That did it. The Wizard of the Crow was the only person who could exorcise the evil, and after the exorcism no force on earth could make her bring the bewitched bags of money back into her house.

  14

  Kamltl did as he had done earlier, placed a mirror at the window, and once again Tajirika was drawn to it as a moth to light and started scratching himself. This time Vinjinia, who kept mum about what had occurred at home, the temporary recovery and sudden relapse, did not try to hold him back. Kamrö then removed the mirror, and Tajirika’s eyes and his own were locked in a stare. Tajirika’s seemed to beg for the return of the mirror.

  “I will let you see the mirror,” the Wizard of the Crow told him gently, softly, and clearly, as if dangling the prospect of candy, “but you and I must first have a talk. If I put the mirror back, do you promise to try to force out the words stuck within you? Will you let me help you complete your thoughts?”

  Tajirika nodded impatiently as if he was ready to do anything just to see the mirror once more. When the Wizard of the Crow put the mirror back, Tajirika resumed scratching himself while muttering ifs.

  The voice of the Wizard of the Crow now seemed to issue from inside the mirror:

  “Vomit the words, the good and the bad!”

  “If …” Tajirika said, and paused.

  “Now,” urged the Wizard of the Crow.

  “My …” Tajirika added, and then got stuck.

  “More.”

  “Skin …”

  “Keep going.”

  “Were not …”

  “Good, good …”

  “Black.”

  Tajirika paused as if to take breath before climbing another mountain. From inside the mirror came the same commanding voice.

  “Complete the thought. The good and the bad. Complete the thought!”

  “If only …”

  “Yes!”

  “My skin …”

  “Don’t stop now!”

  “Were … white … like a … white man’s … skin …” Tajirika said, enunciating each word like one learning how to read.

  “There! You have voiced the treacherous thought!” the Wizard of the Crow said in congratulation, removing the mirror from the window.

  Tajirika no longer lusted for the mirror. His face shone as it had not done for weeks. He looked at the Wizard of the Crow with awe.

  “Now I want you to voice your thoughts without the aid of the mirror,” the Wizard of the Crow told him.

  “If … my … skin … were … not … black! Oh, if only my skin were white!” Tajirika said in the triumphant tone of a child who for the first time has read a complete sentence without stumbling. A burden had been lifted from his heart, and as he finished voicing his secret desire he turned his head away from the window and, with a sigh of relief, glanced at his wife, his face beaming with an all-embracing gratitude, like that of a person who has just confessed his sins and given himself over to Jesus as his personal savior.

  “You have heard for yourselves,” the Wizard of the Crow now said to Vinjinia. “Daemons of whiteness took possession of your husband the night he brought home these three bags of money. You remember how you told me that it was after he counted the money that he rested his legs on the table and closed his eyes? That was the evil hour! As he looked into the future, he suddenly realized that at the rate the money was coming in he would end up being the richest man in Africa, and the only thing missing to distinguish him from all the other black rich was white skin. He saw his skin as standing between him and the heaven of his desire. When he scratched his face, daemons within were urging him to break ranks with blackness and enter into union with whi
teness. In short, he suffers from a severe case of white-ache.”

  Tajirika kept nodding to signal agreement with every word of the diagnosis. He was happy and relieved, because even before he came into that kind of money he had always borne the burden of self-hatred but had managed to suppress it. Now, thanks to the affliction and to Vinjinia, who’d brought him here, this sorcerer had managed to make him own up to it. Before today he had not had anybody with whom to share his secret, but now he felt as if those present were witnesses to his coming pact with his white destiny.

  But soon he fell into a deep depression. People did not become white or black; they were born so. His was an unattainable desire, and to yearn for the unattainable to the point of paralysis was indeed an illness that might plague him for the rest of his life.

  “And what is the cure for white-ache?” Vinjinia asked, happy that her husband had given voice to his desires, and fearful that the malady might return.

  Tajirika awaited the answer, and, thinking the Wizard of the Crow too slow in his response, added to his wife’s plea: “What is the cure?” he asked.

  “Tajirika, you know about smallpox.”

  “A terrible disease, that one, a scourge. Almost wiped out black people at the end of the nineteenth century. In some ways it was worse than the current virus of death. Quite infectious, and there was no way of avoiding it. Except through good luck. Thank God it is no more.”

  “How was it conquered?”

  “Through mass vaccination.”

  “Exactly. Inoculating people with the germs of smallpox. The same with tuberculosis. Tajirika, have you ever fried bacon?”

  “Eggs, sausages, and bacon are my morning favorites for breaking my nightly fasts,” Tajirika said. “But of course it is my wife who cooks them.”

  “What oil does she use for frying the bacon?”

  “Mr. Wizard of the Crow, don’t make me laugh. Have you not heard the saying that a pig is fried with its own fat? But tell me, what has smallpox, tuberculosis, and pig’s meat got to do with white-ache?”

  “Use the disease against itself! Become white!”

  Tajirika could not believe his ears. Here he was, depressed by the realization that he could never become white no matter how wealthy he became, and here was this sorcerer, saying that there was actually a way to whiteness. That the impossible could be made possible!

  “How?” he asked doubtfully after recovering from the pleasant shock. “I hope you are not thinking of a skin transplant?”

  “Oh, no, it’s far simpler and less painful than that,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “Becoming white is actually quite simple, but it calls for work, hard work.”

  “Say no more—the shoe fits,” Tajirika said now, abandoning himself to his joy at this unexpected turn in the tide of his earthly fortune, for he would kill two birds with one stone: cure his white-ache and become white. “Mr. Wizard of the Crow, tell me how to become white. I am ready to do what is needed. And when the deed is done, whatever you may want from me is yours to command.”

  “First, help me solve a riddle!” said the Wizard of the Crow.

  “Go ahead!”

  “What is the first thing that tells who a person is?”

  “The color of one’s skin.”

  “No, Tajirika. Let’s go back to history. When African people were taken as slaves across the Atlantic Ocean in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, what was the very first thing that the whites took away from the New World Africans?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tajirika, wondering what slavery in centuries past had to do with what they had been talking about.

  “Okay. Let me ask you another question. When children are born, what do their fathers and mothers give them to distinguish them from others?”

  “Names?”

  “Exactly. So what did the white slavers do to their black slaves? Took away their original names to make them over into what they wanted them to be. Are you with me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wizard of the Crow.”

  “So to become white you must first give up your name. And, unlike those Africans who were forced to do so, you must give yours up willingly. Become a willing slave.”

  “That is not such a big deal. Tajirika is out!” Tajirika wondered why the Wizard of the Crow had said that becoming white required work. And then?”

  “Slaves were forced to take on the names of their owners. But you are lucky, Tajirika, because you have the freedom to choose from among thousands of European names.”

  “That is even easier. I have already got one. Titus,” he said proudly, as if he had been on the right path all along.

  “Titus? Mmm, let’s see. Do you know where it comes from? I mean, to whom it points?”

  “No.”

  “What’s come over you, Titus, forgetting your religion?” Vinjinia interjected suddenly. “Don’t you know that Titus was a convert and helper of St. Paul? Paul even wrote him a letter, Epistle to Titus?”

  “Oh, is that where the name comes from?” Tajirika said.

  “There was also another Titus,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “Titus Flavius Vespasianus. Roman emperor. In the construction business, like you. Completed the Colosseum in Rome. Emperor and saint. Not bad, a name that carries both.”

  “But this emperor and this saint, were they white?” Tajirika asked in a tone tinged with doubt.

  “Yes,” said the Wizard of the Crow.

  “So Titus is white!” said Tajirika, now happy again.

  “But it has been tarnished by its years of contact with your African Tajirika,” said Vinjinia.

  “Yes. Go for a name that you think best points to the whiteness of your dreams. Freedom of choice. Choose what you want to be. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wizard of the Crow.”

  “Now, Titus,” the Wizard of the Crow suddenly called out in a commanding tone, “what is your name? What is your new name in full?”

  “Clement Clarence Whitehead,” said Tajirika, as proud as a peacock. “What next?” he asked, rubbing his hands together.

  “A slave first loses his name, then his language. So, Mr. Clement Clarence Whitehead, you now know what to do next. Your language. Give it up.”

  Gone!

  “Then start speaking English like a white man.”

  “That I have already started doing,” Tajirika assured the Wizard of the Crow, and he started drawling out a couple of sentences: Hi! Give mefi! I am Clement Clarence Whitehead …

  “No, no, not American, Mr. Whitehead. The so-called American English has been completely contaminated by Black English, or what they now call Ebonics.”

  “Blame it on the cheap American TV we watch. They are ruining our tongue. I don’t want Ebonics—I want the real thing. I swear that from now on I will keep on trying to perfect my English tongue. It is not easy and it will need much practice.”

  “You have spoken well,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “Nothing comes from nothing.”

  “I have what it takes. Next?” Tajirika asked a trifle impatiently, ready to leap over the remaining steps to whiteness.

  “I want you to know, Mr. Whitehead, that we are now coming to the most difficult part of the matter, so I want you to listen very carefully. What does the Holy Bible say about matrimony, holy matrimony?”

  “That women should obey their husbands.”

  “But that is after they are married. What about the marriage itself? What does the Bible say?”

  “Mr. Wizard of the Crow, aren’t you digressing a bit?” Tajirika said, treading lightly so as not to offend his benefactor.

  “You see, when two people are joined in holy matrimony, they become one flesh, or something like that.”

  “What has that got to do with becoming white?”

  “Logic, Mr. Clement Clarence Whitehead, simple white logic. A certain African sage says that whites are driven by logic and blacks by emotion. Think with white logic, not with black emotion. If it is true that when a man and woman
are joined in holy matrimony they become one flesh, then the quickest and surest way to change the color of one’s skin is to marry into the color one wants to become. That means, Mr. Whitehead, that you must marry white so as to take on the whiteness of your spouse.”

  “I hear you, and what I have heard so far is good,” Tajirika said.

  “But how do I know that my wife will not take on my blackness, leaving me in the same black hole? Or does she become black and I white?”

  “Why should you care? This is all about your becoming white. Look for a white woman who wants to be black, one of those forever frying herself under the sun, and you simply exchange colors. A kind of barter trading in color, don’t you think?”

  Up to that point Vinjinia had not seen anything wrong with the steps the Wizard of the Crow proposed to cure Tajirika’s white-ache. But when now the talk turned to possibilities of Tajirika’s marrying white, she became wary: visions of a broken marriage, a broken home, seized her, and she could no longer hold her tongue.

  “What are you saying, Mr. Wizard of the Crow? You are telling my husband to divorce me and marry a white woman? And you, Titus, how dare you even think of it? You would divorce me just like that after all the years we have been together? And with God blessing us with children?” She said all of this hastily, for she did not know to whom to direct her pain.

  “Keep out of this and let the Wizard of the Crow finish what he was saying,” Tajirika shouted at Vinjinia with piercing, angry eyes. I have always said that black women have no manners, he said to himself as he turned back to the Wizard of the Crow, ignoring his wife completely. “After I marry white, what next?”

  Nyawlra could hardly believe what she was hearing or what she saw unfolding before her. She felt like laughing but the laughter stuck in her throat as she witnessed another crisis erupt.

  Vinjinia had started trembling and shaking like one possessed. At first Nyawlra thought it was from anger. Then she saw her fall off the chair onto the floor, where she started rolling. Tajirika rushed to Vinjinia and tried to lift her up but failed. Nyawlra was about to help him but then thought better of it. Let them settle their differences on their own. But Tajirika did not seem to be in a mood to settle anything, resentful as he was that the wizard’s rituals of magic transplant were now at the mercy of female daemons. After struggling to get his wife back on her feet, Tajirika managed to make Vinjinia sit up on the floor. Her eyes were wild and it seemed as if she was not even aware who Tajirika was. In a world to herself, she now took out a mirror from her bag and looked at her face. And then, to Nyawlra’s utter amazement, Vinjinia started coughing and muttering, “If! If only!”