Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  Crossing the prairie on foot was a whole day’s journey. Nyawlra had started early, but her crossing took longer because she kept looking from side to side to see if she could catch sight of Kamltl. She also carried a basket full of things she knew Kamltl might need, and the weight slowed her. As tired as she was, Nyawlra did not really mind. She had decided to seek out Kamltl wherever he might be, for she felt she owed him an apology for the hard feelings she had harbored against him before she read his letter. The letter talked vaguely about his return to the wilderness but mentioned no specific location. She recalled that he had often talked to her about one of his favorite retreats among some rocks between the end of the prairie and the foothills. This was now her destination. But what if she did not find him there, or anywhere else, for that matter? She would have to go back, crossing the prairie alone in the dark; she did not even want to think about it.

  She walked along the foot of the ridge, scared to venture into the forest. Hope was beginning to fade, and soon she started blaming herself for what she now saw as a fiasco. Am I also bewitched? Why would I follow a stranger into places I don’t even know, like the girl in the story who saw a handsome man at market and followed him to his dwelling in the forest, only to find out that he was a man-eating ogre? Appearances could be deceiving. Had she been deceived by Kamltl’s looks and deeds? Was he deliberately misleading her in his letter? Who after all was Kamltl wa Karlmlri? She recalled the gentleman of the jungle in Amos Tutuola’s book The Palm-Wine Drinkard, who had returned borrowed body parts to their owners and now dwelled in the forest, a skull among other skulls. What if … ? She suddenly felt her knees drained of strength.

  She saw a tree stump at the side of the hill and sat on it to rest and take stock of her situation. She had to make up her mind whether to go on with what seemed like a fruitless search or return to the city. She looked at the wide-open prairie before her, and it appeared to have no beginning or end, though in the horizon the skyline of Eldares was barely discernible in the mix of encroaching darkness and smoke from the factories.

  “Nyawlra,” a voice called out behind her. Her heart raced, suffusing her with warmth. She had recognized the voice but dared not believe her ears despite the echo. Slowly, she turned her head to where she thought the voice came from. Kamltl was standing there, somewhat hidden by the bush.

  She stood up and walked toward him and Kamltl held her hand. At the touch, Nyawlra felt her body tremble from head to foot while Kamltl felt blood rush to his fingertips, his entire body awash in a sensation he had not felt for a long time. Nyawlra let him lead her farther up into the bush to a grassy moor surrounded by piles of gray stone, almost like a courtyard. He led her into a rocky cave. “Welcome,” Kamltl said in a shaking voice.

  Nyawlra was surprised at herself. Everything she had wanted to say to Kamltl as she walked across the prairie had vanished; she felt incapable of speech. If she spoke now she would frighten away the goodness she felt in the air. So, amid the darkness of the evening and a deep silence, they just stood there holding hands, as if neither could believe the reality of the moment.

  “I have come for the honey of life—isn’t that what you called it?” Nyawlra said just to break the silence, setting her basket of provisions against the rock wall.

  “You have spoken,” Kamltl replied.

  Both thought that their words were a prelude to their usual light-hearted banter, but instead they found themselves stripping each other, wild-eyed, breathing heavily, their bodies taut with anticipation. He was about to remove her chemise when he stopped.

  “I am sorry that I don’t have any condoms,” he said.

  “No, no, don’t stop,” Nyawlra told him. “I brought some,” she added as she unbuttoned his trousers.

  On the ground, in the cave, now wrapped in darkness, they found themselves airborne over hills and valleys, floating through blue clouds to the mountaintop of pure ecstasy, from where, suspended in space, they felt the world go round and round, before they descended, sliding down a rainbow, toward the earth, their earth, where the grass, plants, and animals seemed to be singing a lullaby of silence as Nyawlra and Kamltl, now locked in each other’s arms, slept the sleep of babies, the dawn of a new day awaiting.

  21

  They woke up as the sun was rising, their bodies cold. Beads of dew on their clothes shone like diamonds, and neither could recall when or how they had interrupted their sleep to put on clothes, for even now they felt as if in a dream. They shook off the dew.

  “Show me where I can wash my face,” Nyawlra asked him.

  He led her to a stream, where they bent down and washed themselves. The water was clear and cold, almost numbing. Then they returned to their hiding place among the rocks.

  Nyawlra had brought a few boiled eggs, some sugar, some cocoa, matches, a kettle, a small cooking pot. Having gathered goods from the earth still in abundance around them, they prepared a simple meal and conversed like in old times, cheerful talk that massaged their souls and kept them laughing. Kamltl thanked Nyawlra and an abundant nature for the meal.

  “Nature may be abundant,” said Nyawlra in response, “but it is also good to build a granary for when nature has the flu. I understand that long ago there was no home that could answer to the name of home without a granary being part of the architecture. Look at our Aburlria today. How many households have a granary? None, because they have nothing to store. Am I straying from my point? I suppose what is bothering me is the image of a hermit competing with animals for honey and wild berries.”

  “You are still lawyering?” Kamltl said. “You should have taken a degree in law and become an advocate.”

  “Even now I am an advocate. An advocate of the people …”

  “And me? A self-appointed advocate for the rights of animals and plants,” Kamltl said, laughing. “But you will agree with me that my lawyering is more selfless, because animals and plants have no tongues with which to lawyer for themselves.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “That I am going to take you on a tour to meet my friends, all the natives of the forest.”

  “Tree and animal friends?”

  “Yes, and the birds and the plants and the mountains and the valleys.”

  “I am looking forward to the guided tour. But don’t lawyer for the natives—let them lie for themselves,” Nyawlra said.

  “Let’s make a plan for the first day: what would you like to see?”

  “Wherever you take me I shall follow and say it is good,” she said.

  Throughout the day they never talked about the Tajirikas, or the Wizard of the Crow, or even Kamltl’s abrupt departure from Santalu-cia and his adoption of the wild. It was as if they had made a secret pact not to let recent events in Eldares intrude on their communion with each other and nature. They felt good and at peace amid nature’s bounty.

  They were like-minded about so many things. They often punctuated their talk with songs, stories, and friendly banter, such as when they came across a zebra rat and then a field mouse. They stopped and in unison sang about the animals.

  Zebra rat

  And field mouse

  Once went to

  A granary

  Of an in-low

  To feed

  And out came

  Nine goats

  Of youth

  To turn ten

  It was a song that helped them count up to ten, but the logic was in the rhythm instead of the meaning of the words. Once again they laughed together, and as they looked in each other’s eyes they were suddenly without words. They resumed their walk in silence, taken up by the light they saw in each other’s eyes.

  Love was everywhere: in the tree branches where the nests of weaverbirds hung; in the fern where the widowbird had left two long black tail feathers; in the murmurings of the Eldares River as it flowed eastward before turning into a roaring waterfall; in the sun’s rays, which pierced through the waterfall, splitting into the seven colors of the rainbow;
in the still waters of a small lake made by the river where Kamltl and Nyawlra now swam and bathed and chased each other, splashing water on each other; in the blackjacks, the goose-grass and other plants, the flowers and seeds of which stuck to their wet clothes; in the movement of porcupines and hedgehogs; in the wings of the helmeted and crested guinea fowls, francolins that scampered away after stealing glances at the couple; in the honeybees and butterflies hopping from flower to flower; in the cooing of the doves; in the mating calls of the river frogs from among the reeds and water lilies. Love was there among the creeping plants that twined around the tree trunks; yes, in the blackberries, some of which they plucked and fed to each other. Love was there in the breeze that made the leaves sway ever so gently. Love was everywhere in this forest, but neither Nyawlra nor Kamltl mentioned the word.

  Later, seated on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a sycamore tree, they sipped cocoa, sometimes in silence, each lost in a world of his or her making, thinking the same thoughts and now and then indulging in small talk. Love had followed them here as moonlight illuminated the leaves to form patterns of light and shadow on the ground and their bodies. Yet still they could not pronounce love to each other or even silently to themselves.

  But they felt enveloped in peace beyond understanding, peace emanating from the forest even though the crickets were calling and hyenas were howling from afar, and when Kamltl and Nyawlra looked at each other, their eye beams pulled them together, Kamltl’s fingers straying to Nyawlra’s nipples, the color of blackberries.

  They slid into wordless wonder, and even on waking up in the morning they were still firmly locked in each other’s arms as if they would never ever part.

  22

  However, by the late afternoon a chill had grown between them, not because their disposition toward each other had changed but because they had put many issues on hold, issues that could no longer be ignored.

  Kamltl tried to answer questions that must have been bothering Nyawlra; the letter he had left behind for her had been cryptic.

  “Not that I knew what prompted me to turn my back on healing, divination, and the money, to embrace the life of a hermit in the wilderness,” Kamltl struggled to explain.

  He spoke in an even tone, neither high nor low, neither sad nor joyful, a little introspective, perhaps, as if in addressing Nyawlra he was holding a dialogue with himself.

  “Maybe there were many reasons; maybe there was only one; the truth is that nothing is very clear in my mind. I did not choose to play at being the Wizard of the Crow. I was thrust into it. You know how this whole business began. What was his name—I mean the police officer who chased us across the prairie that night? Arigaigai Gathere. A.G. What a name! Arigaigai! Had you ever come across such a name before? It was A.G. who set me on the road to sorcery. My own troubles made me all too willing. At first I thought that I was merely playing a role, briefly. I was proud that I never once dispensed magic that could harm anyone; and I never really lied to my clients. I never employed conjuring tricks to mesmerize. I worked with thoughts and images already in their own minds. But still I pretended to be what I was not. Did I not heal under falsehood? Imagine going to a doctor only to learn afterward that he has no training in his craft, no license to practice? I was a quack of a wizard. But that is beside the point. My divinations were an appetite for evil. Take Tajirika and his ilk; did I not breathe new life into him, increasing his self-confidence in doing evil? Protected by magic as he now imagines himself to be, is he not now free to rob with impunity? Did my divination not facilitate his thievery? I was an accessory to the very evil that revolted me.

  “Maybe at the very beginning I harbored the illusion that there might come to me one or two who would be bold enough to see the error of their ways and say, I have a blemish, help me remove it. This might have given my role some worth. But no, they were all driven by greed and hatred.

  “They were interested in only two things: to be empowered and to cripple their rivals. Yes, when it came to greed, they were clones of one another. Their greed stank. Even as I asked them questions about their afflictions, the smell of evil and greed oozed out of their every pore and made it difficult for me to breathe. For a time I was able to endure the ooze by sniffing the scent of flowers that you always left behind. But Tajirika’s rot proved more terrible than any that I had experienced before: a black man celebrating the negation of himself. This final blast of foul air was unbearable.

  “I don’t know where I got the strength to do it, but I eventually did find myself outside the door, and still the foulness pursued me. I panicked. Whenever I had gone out into the open I had been able to rid myself of their stench and breathe fresh air. This was now not the case. I collapsed. When later I came to my senses I felt that I did not want to go back to the shrine, but I managed to force myself into the house to write you the letter. By then I had already made up my mind.’’

  “To do what?” Nyawlra asked.

  “Flee Eldares. Abandon human community for the wilderness.”

  “In your letter, what did you mean by the words I am going to find myself?” Nyawlra quizzed him.

  “I don’t want to say that at the time of writing the letter I was in a position to convey all my thoughts in words. Say I just wanted to escape the stink. I told you that when I went outside the house I felt that the rot had followed me and as if it were now oozing through my clothes, my body, me, and I had never felt like that before. I asked myself: If I start stinking like them, what will be the difference between them and me?”

  “And the rot that you talk about so movingly—what do you suppose will bring it to an end?”

  “The affairs of the people are too heavy a burden for me to carry”

  “Did you yourself not say that the needs of the many call for more than the hands of a single person? Is that not why they say that many hands make work light?”

  “I just want to stay in the wilderness to find myself. I want to know what I really want from my life. Maybe the blood of the hunters in me is calling.”

  “You mean it is telling you to run away from the people? To heal yourself?”

  “One must find oneself before one can try to help others.”

  “Physicians do not heal themselves. And our people say that even the most skilled barber needs another to cut his hair. To strike a fire you need tinder and a stick. The problems of the country are ours. Nobody can bear them alone. We cannot run away and leave the affairs of the land to ogres and scorpions. This land is mine. This land is yours. This land is ours. Besides, in Aburlria, there is nowhere to run. As you’ve said, even these forests are threatened by the greed of those in power.”

  “What am I to do? Return to divination?” he said, as if repeating questions he had already posed to himself.

  “The power to divine is a gift. No matter how hard I may try, I don’t think I can settle cases with the wisdom I have seen you display. It is as if you can see into the hearts of people as well as read the very thoughts in their minds. Like the way you dealt with Tajirika and Vin-jinia. Who would ever have thought that wishes could so afflict the body and mind? What an affliction it was! A white-ache so deep-seated that it almost made him lose his business!”

  Kamltl looked away to the hills far in the distance.

  “What is it?” Nyawlra asked anxiously.

  Kamltl did not answer immediately. He slowly turned to face Nyawlra again.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing, really, but I hope that a day will come when we can talk about everything …”

  “Let’s talk now,” Nyawlra said encouragingly, “even about that which you call nothing. Didn’t you ask me a minute ago what a person can do? Let me ask you. If you found a grown man taking food from a child by force, would you just stand there and watch the drama?”

  “No. What do you want?” Kamltl asked her. “You didn’t come here just to be with me.”

  “Marching to Heaven will swallow our land. Where shall we take shelter from
the sun and rain? It will snatch water from the mouth of the thirsty and food from the mouth of the hungry. Skeletons will people our country. How shall we get back the body, the mind, and the soul of the nation?”

  Nyawlra now told him about the secret plans of the Ruler: that they had chosen a day in which to dedicate a site to the project of Marching to Heaven. She told him of the State’s sinister intentions to use the queues in Eldares to convince the Global Bank mission that the people were fully in support of the project.

  “For a time we in the movement thought of campaigning against the queuing, but given the level of unemployment in this country, there was no way we were going to stop the mania. So instead we are going to make our own procession of protest. All of us men and women of Aburlria must join hands in opposing this madness of Marching to Heaven. We oppose the right of might with the might of right. We want you to be one of us. Use your God-given powers of divination for the benefit of the people, the movement.”

  Kamltl stood up and once again stared beyond the hills. When he turned to her, his eyes shone with a light Nyawlra had not seen, a light more of sorrow than joy, the light of one burdened with a knowledge he would rather not possess. He sat next to Nyawlra and put his arm around her shoulder, and Nyawlra felt a tremor in her body as she awaited his response.

  “In truth, something other than the stench of corruption drove me from Eldares,” Kamltl started. “A combination of events forced me to look within myself, and I saw no clear purpose in my life. My only goal had been to educate myself so as to earn plenty of money to make good my parents’ sacrifice. As you know, this dictated my choice of business studies as my main subject. The irony was that although I was doing well in my studies, I did not feel that I really wanted a life in business.