Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  He started drafting the press statement. He stumbled over words and phrases, but he persevered and for a time the task kept his mind busy. Dear Gentlemen of the Press. I have called you here today to tell you and, in telling you, tell the world that I would give up my life for the Ruler. As I am so loyal, how could anyone imagine that I could possibly have anything to do with a worker, a simple secretary, or a simple housewife, subverting the Mightiest of Governments … etc.

  Three days passed and still there was no call from the minister or visit from Officer Tumbo. Tajirika stared at his unfinished press statement and felt he had arrived at a cul-de-sac: how could he denounce women accountable to him whose whereabouts he did not knowr What if his statement was turned against him, claims made that he had probably murdered them and buried their bodies in the backyard and was only pretending that they had disappeared?

  Dispirited, weighed down by having no clear way out, he simply clung to his glass of whiskey for support and comfort.

  It was then that he heard the screech of a car coming to a stop outside. He stood up, and as he was about to peer through the window the telephone rang. For a second he was torn between the car and the phone. He went for the phone. He was glad: it was Machokali, and he was certain that a conversation with his friend the minister would clear things up or clear the way for his press conference.

  It was obvious that Machokali did not want to talk on the phone, and within seconds they had agreed on a time and a place to meet.

  As he put the phone down, he heard the sound of the car leaving. He rushed to the door.

  Vinjinia entered.

  “Where in heavens have you been?” Tajirika asked.

  “In the secret grip of the State,” Vinjinia said lifelessly.

  “What are you talking about?” Tajirika asked, unnerved more by the confirmation than by his previous uncertainty.

  8

  State and secret often go together. The secrets are known to only a few called secretaries in some countries and ministers in others, but both names reflect their roles as servants of state secrets. The Great Dictator of Aburlria alias the Ruler of the Free Republic of Aburiria did not trust anybody to keep his secrets. Even those ministers reputed to be close to him because they were the last to see him at night and first to see him in the morning were never sure about their fate, or whether by sunset or sunrise they would still be holding their jobs.

  There was chilling precedence for this.

  How many times had the dictator lifted a few, singing their praises, taking them with him everywhere for every ceremony, and just when they started believing that they were indeed “the beloved of the father” the dictator would suddenly pull the magic carpet from under them. Having fallen, the ex-beloved, bruised and broken, would crawl on all fours, crying out for mercy and forgiveness, this for a day, a week, a month, a year, or several years. Then suddenly, out of the blue, the dictator would hear the man’s cry and send political fixers to assuage his misery. Arise, you may walk again, the dictator would say to the saved, and the man, so grateful, would forever wax lyrical about the dictator’s boundless generosity, especially when blessed with a directorship of this or that marketing board, chairmanship of this or that wildlife society, or even another ministerial post.

  The dictator’s reputation for making minister plot against minister, region rise against region, and community fight against community was now a matter of legend. He would side with one warring faction, which would rejoice at its alliance with power only to wake up one morning to find that the dictator had sided with its adversary, for a time, at least, before changing sides again or even goading altogether another faction into the fray. The dictator, seemingly above it all, looking good as he appealed for peace and understanding, would be embraced by all the feuding parties as a Solomonic prince of peace.

  Though aware of this, the well-to-do, the self-appointed leaders of communities, members of Parliament, and especially cabinet ministers never ceased competing to sit on the right side of the father. Yet the winner always lived in terror of being displaced by a rival wilier in the ways of sycophancy. The problem was that the Ruler never let anyone know what was expected of him to retain his place of honor. Even humility and self-abnegation, however abject, were not enough to prevent one’s downfall. For in his long ascendance to ultimate authority, the Ruler had himself been the nonpareil master of humility and self-abnegation.

  As to how he rose to the mountaintop of power, many stories are told. According to one version, he emerges in history as a champion of an unquestioning humility before power. He was first widely known during the colonial times for seeming meek and mild-mannered to every white man with whom he came into contact. All the white settlers’ and missionary reports about him concurred that he was a good African, and later, “our man.” Whether in school, the government bureaucracy, or the army, his servile bearing facilitated his climb up the ladder of success. He had failed to attain his high school diploma, but nonetheless he ended up an assistant headmaster of an African school on a settler’s farm in western Aburlria. Seeing that full head-mastership was the most that he could ever attain in education, he quit the profession and went into the colonial army, becoming a self-proclaimed Military Officer of Information. His main job was helping to produce leaflets in praise of the heroic deeds of the colonial army against the nationalist insurgents. He rose to the rank of corporal, and there he would probably have remained had the nationalist insurgents not forced the colonialist mother country to rethink her strategy. When it was clear to the white settlers that independence for

  Aburiria was inevitable, the Ruler-to-be was once again appointed their man in the coming rearrangement of things. He was a natural choice, and it took careful planning that spanned several years. First they shrouded him in a mantle of nationalism. Even though the future Excellency was then just a journalist, he found himself climbing the military ranks from corporal to sergeant to sergeant-major all in a matter of weeks. It was then that the future Excellency produced a carefully worded statement completely unlike any of the leaflets he had hitherto produced. For now he called for improvements in the working conditions of the black people in the army; he vowed that otherwise he would quit his military post and forfeit promised honors to struggle for the rights of his people. A week later, he resigned and announced his intention to form his own nationalist political party.

  Fhe party not only would fight for improved working conditions for black Aburlrians in the army and for the promotion of blacks to higher ranks, but would also champion the causes of all the smaller pastoral communities and fight for their right to wear traditional clothes and carry cultural weapons like bows and arrows, spears, and knock-berry clubs. They would sooner do without schools or even adequate grazing grounds than give up these cultural symbols so crucial to the defense of their traditions now threatened by larger ethnic communities, mostly supported by so-called progressive parties who had joined hands with terrorists to demand freedom now. Freedom now? All that these progressives wanted was for the whites to leave so that they would appropriate the grazing fields and watering holes of small communities and abolish their culture. Whereas those other parties wanted land and freedom, the Ruler-to-be’s party wanted freedom with honor and scoffed at the idea of a timetable for freedom. The mother of the colonial state was happy. The white settlers were happy. The blacks in the colonial army were jubilant: they now had a champion and need not fear about their place in the new black order.

  When independence was negotiated, the white settlers rallied behind the man and his party with secret money and diplomacy, and urged him to demand that as the representative of smaller communities he must be the second only to the first president, who was from the bigger communities. Failing that, the smaller communities should demand self-rule and secede if necessary. Most important, he and his party would have nothing to do with the armed insurgents.

  The former colonial army, now renamed the national army even before negotiat
ions had begun, also made its preferences known. The nationalist insurgents were shut out of direct negotiations in Europe. All else followed a preordained logic. Why not talks between the “main” parties to avoid future ethnic strife? The result was predictable. The agreement to merge all the nationalist parties into a United Party to ensure harmony between the major and minor ethnic groups, with the future Ruler now as number two to the First Ruler, a man advanced in years, was hailed as a triumph of moderation by all sides, and mostly by the mother of the erstwhile colonial state.

  That is one version among many, but all agree on one thing: the Ruler’s rise to power had something to do with his alliance with the colonial state and the white forces behind it. They also agree that he had come to value self-abnegation as the way of dealing with anybody with authority above him.

  In his dealings with the First Ruler of the Free Republic of Aburlria, he humbled himself in every possible way, taking all shit from his new boss, marking time as Vice Ruler but biding his time. His capacity for absorbing every kind of abuse became legendary, and nobody who saw him kneel, crawl, or cringe before the boss could see the future greatness of the man.

  But the more he humbled himself to his superiors, the more he expected the same from his underlings to assuage a deep-seated self-doubt. This need for assurance often resulted in acts of implacable brutality against the weak. No sooner was he fully in charge after the mysterious death of the First Ruler than he asked for the list of all condemned prisoners awaiting clemency and signed the warrant for their immediate execution. When he saw that his signature on paper or a word from his mouth could bring about the immediate cessation of a life, he there and then truly believed in his omnipotence. He was now sovereign.

  What even those closest to him did not then realize was that the worst had yet to come. His lust for blood revealed itself when a breakaway group from the United Party formed the Aburlrian Socialist Party, attracting in no time a grassroots following across the ethnic divide. At the time, the cold war was starting. His friends in the West demanded that he do something about this. He immediately declared Aburlria a one-party state. The United Party changed its name to the

  Ruler’s Party and became the only legal political authority The leaders of the socialist splinter group, having announced that they would take up arms and seek assistance from Cuba and Russia, went underground. Some say that the socialists were careless and irresponsible in what they did, ill prepared for consequences. Others have since claimed with documentation that the call to arms was the Ruler’s fabrication. Whatever the case, his friends in the West needed him to assume the mantle of the leader of Africa and the Third World, for Aburlria was of strategic importance to the West’s containment of Soviet global domination. The Ruler accused the Socialist party of forming one link in the chain of the Soviet ambitions. Aburlria did not fight Western colonialism in order to end up under Eastern Communist colonialism, he declaimed, the first time he had used the phrase “fight Western colonialism” in a positive context.

  It is said that in only a month he mowed down a million Aburlrian Communists, rendering the Ruler the African leader most respected by the West and landing him numerous state visits with kings, queens, and presidents receiving him in their palaces at lavish dinner parties. The Western media was bountiful in its praises: a bulwark against world communism, some called him. A leader not afraid to lead, others said. At long last, AN AFRICAN STATESMAN OF WORLD STATURE, screamed headlines. Countless were the many pictures of him shaking hands with the most powerful of European and American statesmen.

  The Ruler broke the back of organized resistance, and it took some years for opposition to regroup and retrieve fragments of memory and piece them together into a whole. Even then this opposition largely existed underground or in exile, as was the case of Luminous Karamu-Mbu-yaTtmka and Yunity Immaculate Mgeuzi-Rila-Shaka in the days when they used to toy with revolutionary ideas. Above-ground, the Ruler proved adept at stifling all other nascent opposition through the carrot and the stick. He gave the carrot to the elite of the various ethnic communities and the stick to all signs of defiance. Rut sweetness was reserved for the armed forces, who never forgot his dramatic resignation as Military Information Officer from the army they had served under during colonialism. Our man in the State House, some of the generals called him, and the Ruler returned the favor by frequently reminding the nation that the only votes that mattered were those cast for him by the armed forces.

  He was baffled by anyone not motivated by greed. He could never understand the type who talked of collective salvation instead of personal survival. How was one supposed to deal with these recalcitrants? A fisherman puts a worm at the end of the line, but if the fish ignores it, how is the fisherman to catch the fish?

  That is why he could not understand what drove the women to do what they had done. If they had come to him for money, he would gladly have given them thousands of Burls. If they had come to him to beg for a piece of land, he would have heard their entreaty. If they had come to him to complain about their men spending money and time in bars, he would have given them sympathetic hearing and addressed the nation on the matter; but they had asked for no favors. He had not denied them anything. Why then their need to shame the nation?

  Before the event, the Buler would have sworn that he thoroughly understood women through and through. How many men, particularly his ministers, had he humiliated by ordering them to send him their wives, daughters, or girlfriends? At first he assumed that the women would offer at least some token of resistance to his advances, and he was always surprised by how quickly they yielded to his amorous gropings as an act of personal honor and recognition! Some would become indignant at having to make the bed of the Buler, but as soon as their husbands turned their backs, they would be coquettish and genuinely flattered to be of service to power!

  Why were these other women acting out of character? How could they be so oblivious to his might? Wasn’t Bachael a shining example of what he could do to them?

  Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, and was he not the Lord of all Aburlrian women? Yet no matter how hard he considered the matter, he remained unsure as to what to do or where or with whom to start the vengeance like that which he had shown Bachael. Unable to act, his torturous thoughts always returned to the treacherous drama at Eldares in which the women shamed the nation before the eyes of foreign dignitaries and, worse still, in front of the Global Bank missionaries.

  For days on end, after the drama at Eldares, the Buler kept to himself, trapped in secrecy. Terrified by what his silence might mean for his future, every minister preoccupied himself with working out strategies for salvation. Some tried calling the State House under one pretext or another, but the Ruler refused to take their calls. Sikiokuu and Machokali were the most affected, and their troubled souls were reflected in Sikiokuu’s drooping ears and in Machokali’s lifeless eyes.

  Machokali’s woes worsened when one day the Global Bank mission announced that they would be returning to New York. Aware that his reputation had seriously suffered as a result of the recent drama at Eldares and that his hope for redemption lay in their continued presence, Machokali begged the missionaries not to go until they had taken formal leave of the Ruler. They agreed to postpone their departure for a few days, but still Machokali was unable to arrange a get-together at the State House and was too embarrassed to ask them for a further postponement. He blamed a general indisposition for the Ruler’s unavailability. They understood the minister’s predicament, and, to ease his mind, they said he should not worry, that if he or the Ruler ever happened to be in New York they were most welcome to drop by the Bank for further talks. As politic as they thought they were being, they were taken aback when Machokali begged them to put the invitation in writing, which they did, also confirming their flight to New York a few days later.

  Machokali clung to the letter as if it were a talisman and looked forward to the day that he would present it to the Ruler. Unlike his arch
rival, at least he had something in hand, he consoled himself.

  But he was mistaken about his archrival. In the wake of Kaniürü’s good intelligence, Sikiokuu had started feeling confident that he could weather the storm. Nyawlra might still be at large, but Sikiokuu was no longer completely in the dark about the Movement for the Voice of the People. His morale was high. Vinjinia was Tajirika’s wife. Nyawlra was Tajirika’s employee. Tajirika got the powerful position of chairman of Marching to Heaven through Machokali. Vinjinia’s guilt would connect Machokali to the Movement for the Voice of the People and probably to the women who had shamed the nation.

  The Ruler’s continued taciturnity worked in Sikiokuu’s favor, for it gave him time to work out his next move in the game that he and Machokali had been playing to see which was stronger, the Ears or the Eyes of the State.

  It is said that the Ruler stayed closeted in the State House for seven days, seven hours, seven minutes, and seven seconds before calling an emergency session of his cabinet. He had yet to come up with a satisfactory course of action in dealing with the women, whoever they were; meantime, he just wanted a chance to vent his anger at a less elusive target: his ministers.