Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  “Is that so?” the Wizard of the Crow asked innocently. “Wait just where you are; I shall be ready in no time,” he told them, aware that if they had come to arrest him they would not let him out of their sight.

  And sure enough one of them did make a move to follow him, but the Wizard of the Crow turned around and glared at him.

  “Are you sure you want to follow me? Cross my magic lines?”

  “Oh, no! No!” both police officers said in unison. “Take all the time you want, Mr. Wizard of the Crow.”

  He went straight to Nyawlra and apprised her of the situation, instructing her to stay under cover until he and his newfound acquaintances left the compound.

  “It is better this way,” the Wizard of the Crow told her. “It takes their noses away from the shrine and you.”

  As the Wizard of the Crow and the police officers were about to leave, Nyawlra suddenly emerged from the shadows and ran toward them, an open gourd in her left hand and a fly whisk in her right. The threesome stopped in their tracks. The play of light and shadow on Nyawlra made her look otherworldly. She stood in front of them without saying a word, and for a moment Kamltl thought she had lost her mind. Where was the Nyawlra he left cowering speechlessly? Why was she doing this? Nyawlra then dipped the fly whisk into the gourd and shook it over their heads while chanting incantations.

  “If he comes back with even one strand of his hair missing, I will hold you two accountable, accountable, accountable.”

  She circled them and repeated her ritual time and again and with different variations on the same warning.

  At the end of the seventh round, she stopped abruptly and stood a few inches from their stupefied faces. Then, slowly and firmly, as if she did not want them to miss any of her words, she said:

  “And should he become a missing person, you who took him away shall be swallowed by this earth thus!”

  And, saying so, she raised high the bowl and poured the remaining water onto the earth.

  “Or break into pieces like this calabash!” And she crushed the calabash to the ground.

  She then ran back into the house.

  Njoya and Kahiga stood motionless; when they tried to lift their feet, it was as if their legs were chained to the ground.

  “Don’t worry,” the Wizard of the Crow told them. “She is my guardian spirit. My eye of life. As gentle as a lamb. But oh, once aroused to anger, she is possessed by a dangerous daemon. Even to me her word is law.”

  The spell was broken. Mobility returned to the police officers’ feet and they took the Wizard of the Crow to Sikiokuu, Minister of State in the Ruler’s Office.

  11

  As they drove him away, Kamltl thought about Nyawlra and the scene outside the shrine. Since meeting Nyawlra his life had changed in ways he could never have foreseen. He often felt as if he were walking in a field of dreams. The most fleeting images of her would make his blood rush, suffusing him with a sense of goodness, peace, hope, and great though yet unknown expectations.

  What most amazed him about Nyawlra was her humor and laughter in spite of her travails. But no matter how much he thought he knew her, every day brought new surprises. He would never have imagined that, instead of staying inside the house as agreed until he and the police had left, Nyawlra would appear with the force of a hurricane and stage so spellbinding a performance. The police had now spirited him away from her hiding place.

  But soon he was awash in doubts, his knees suddenly weak. What if the police officers were already on to Nyawlra? If not, what if they suspected him of really knowing her whereabouts? What if they tortured him?

  He decided not to worry about that which he could do nothing about. Even if they tortured and interrogated him about Nyawlra and the Movement for the Voice of the People, there was very little he could tell them. Of Nyawlra’s hiding place, he would die rather than reveal it. And what he knew about the movement was only what Nyawlra had told him, which was not much.

  He was so absorbed in these conflicting thoughts and emotions that even when the car stopped outside some buildings he did not realize that they had arrived at their destination.

  During the ride, Njoya and Kahiga had talked neither to him nor to each other. The drama outside the shrine had propelled each into his own world as both tried to figure out the implications of the witch’s dance for their respective lives.

  When they arrived, Njoya left Kahiga and the Wizard of the Crow in the car and went to find out what the minister would have them do with his guest.

  “It is night, a bit late,” Sikiokuu told him, rather curtly. “I will see him tomorrow morning. I don’t want him to think that he is such a big deal that I would stay up all hours of the night to receive him.”

  “Are we meant to take him back to his place?”

  “Of course not,” said Sikiokuu in English, without elaborating.

  “Where should we put him up?” Njoya asked, his heart sinking at these unforeseen developments. “A hotel?”

  “You must be joking. As he is a guest of the State—take him to the government hotel.”

  “I understand that all the cells are full,” Njoya said, trying to wriggle out of having to imprison the Wizard of the Crow.

  “Have him share a room with the madman.”

  12

  Tajirika felt humiliated at the manner of his removal from Sikiokuu’s office, but he turned his anger against Machokali and Vinjinia. Why had his friend not allowed him to be part of the delegation to the USA? he asked himself time and again. Machokali had said that he would call him now and then, but since leaving for America Machokali had not done so once. The doubts Sikiokuu had planted in his mind started to fester. Yet he still could not imagine any connection between Machokali and Vinjinia. But the pictures of his Vinjinia and the dancing women had shaken his trust in her. Not that he had much to begin with. Tajirika subscribed to the saying that the word of a woman or a child should be believed only after the hearer had slept on it. Nevertheless, there had been things he would have been prepared to swear that Vinjinia was incapable of, but now he was not so sure.

  The reports of his wife’s misdemeanor, in having women dance for her, were what hurt most. Although he believed that a woman was inherently untrustworthy, he took it that a man’s wife should be a paragon of virtue. A good man was judged by the goodness of his wife, and a good wife was known for her discretion and ability to cover for the failings of her husband. Such was the woman he had married. A woman who did not demand much from life! A woman who had long ago stopped asking him questions about where he spent the night. A woman who seemed completely satisfied with life around the kitchen and in the fields. A woman who never raised any questions about politics. That was the woman he thought he knew. Could she have feigned all that?

  Maybe Sikiokuu and company were right when they hinted that Nyawlra, whom they supposed to be the mother of all hypocrites, had something to do with the new Vinjinia. Indeed, there was no disputing that everything had started going wrong the day he became ill and Vinjinia started going to the office. If he himself had succumbed to Nyawlra’s slickness, why not Vinjinia? He acknowledged as much, yet he had expected her to have the wherewithal to avoid being so deceived as to end up in the company of shameless primitive dancers.

  Wife beating was a privilege if not a right of male power, and now in the cell he had no opportunity to measure his manhood. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he was reduced to imagining slapping his wife around and her screams for mercy and forgiveness. This allowed him to think more soberly about other things that weighed on him.

  Like the matter of Silver Sikiokuu.

  It was clear that the minister was setting an elaborate trap for Ma-chokali and needed Tajirika to pull it off. But what role was he meant to play? Sikiokuu’s call for him to think about “the real meaning” of if, white, and wish still buzzed in his ears. Was the role hidden in those words? And what was the payback? What was the deal? Sikiokuu had been enigmatic about it. Why?
/>   Sikiokuu was softening him up by having him put back in a cell where a bucket was his toilet. The guards emptied the pail once in three days, and sometimes they would not even keep to the schedule. So there were days when the pail overflowed with shit and urine, the stench becoming his daily and nightly companion. But Sikiokuu was underestimating his will to survive, as well as his business acumen. There was no way that Tajirika was going to accept just any deal without some kind of give-and-take.

  Tajirika did not put too much store in friendship. There was nothing he would not do to save his skin provided the price was right, except take part in anything touching the Buler’s life and power. That would mean certain death. So he was not about to accept that he may have heard others talking about a plot against the Buler.

  How he wished he knew precisely the hour and the day when the Buler and his entourage were returning! Tajirika concluded that he had no alternative but to wait for Sikiokuu to put a deal on the table or for Machokali to return from America, whichever came first.

  Late one night his jailers opened the door to his cell, flung a man inside, and closed the door again. Tajirika kept absolutely still in his corner, listening intensely to the breathing of his fellow prisoner. Unable to bear the silence after a while, Tajirika asked: Who are you?” But the man, whoever he was, did not answer him.

  He is perhaps a killer brought here in secrecy at midnight to do you harm, an inner voice told Tajirika. He broke out in a cold sweat and started shaking. The tension getting the better of him, he started screaming:

  “Don’t kill me. I beg you, don’t kill me. I have committed no crime. Have mercy on me. I have a wife and children. Please don’t spill innocent blood because of money. Whatever they have given you, I promise to double it.”

  “Sshh!” the man responded, but Tajirika was so self-absorbed that he did not hear him.

  “How much money have they given you?” Tajirika asked, and this time paused, anticipating a response.

  “What for?” the man asked.

  “To kill me.”

  “Why should I kill you? I don’t know you. I have never met you.”

  “That’s exactly what I am trying to impress upon you. I am innocent. I have never harmed a soul.”

  “Then you have nothing to fear. I will not kill you,” the man told him.

  “What did you say?”

  “Keep quiet. I will not kill you.”

  “Thank you, my savior. How much do you want?”

  “Why would I want your money?”

  “For sparing my life. For sparing me.”

  “Who told you that I am here to do away with you?”

  “Then who are you? And why have they brought you here?”

  “Listen,” the man said angrily. “I have no idea who you are. I’m not in the mood to chat. Go to sleep and let me do the same,” the man said, and then kept quiet.

  But to Tajirika, the man’s ensuing silence was ominous. He is all pretense. He wants to lull me to sleep, then murder me.

  “Don’t think that you can fool me,” Tajirika said.

  “Why?” the man asked.

  “I know you want me to fall asleep …”

  “Are you nuts?”

  Despite Tajirika’s provocations, the man refused to respond the rest of the night, serving only to confirm Tajirika’s suspicions that Sikiokuu wanted him dead. He did not close his eyes once. Dawn found him staring at the corner where the man lay.

  Neither believed his own eyes.

  “Titus Tajirika!” “Wizard of the Crow!”

  13

  Tajirika was ecstatic at the apparition of someone with the power to get him out of prison. Nothing was beyond the reach of the Wizard of the Crow, who might even have come precisely to relieve Tajirika’s tribulations. Tajirika did not even bother to inquire as to what the Wizard of the Crow was doing or how he came to be there.

  He simply proceded to unburden himself of all that he had suffered since receiving the summons to appear before Kaniürü’s Commission of Inquiry into the Queuing Mania. He told of his arrest, his interrogation by both Njoya and Kahiga, his encounter with Sikiokuu in the minister’s office, and his return to this dark cell. The only thing he could not bring himself to tell was Vinjinia’s shameful betrayal, and especially her posing for pictures with the dancing women.

  “Look at what Sikiokuu has done to me! See that bucket? That is the toilet. When did they last empty it? Seven days ago. Luckily I am not shitting much. Still, as you can see, the bucket is almost full.”

  “All yours?”

  “Yes. No one else has been in this cell since I’ve been here. How dare he do this to me? What should I do about it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You know the saying that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers? I feel like that grass in the struggle between Sikiokuu and Machokali for power behind the throne. The problem is that Sikiokuu has not been clear about what he really wants me to do.”

  “How much clearer does he have to be, given what you told me he asked you about Machokali?”

  “He didn’t even mention Machokali by name. He was circumspect, talking to me in riddles about a disciple of the doubting Thomas, a Frenchman named Descartes. Then he told me to go away and think more deeply about my lust for whiteness.”

  “Can’t you see that he just wants you to say in your own words that somebody else infected you with white-ache? But who can you single out and say, This or that one infected me, or, That one is the host of the disease? Is there anyone among those you call your friends who does not suffer from the malady, the white-hot greed behind his self-centeredness? The man was right to ask you to think further about the meaning and implications of what you said. But what do you do after you have brooded?”

  “And that is what I want to know. What should I do?”

  “First, examine yourself.”

  “Of course one must examine oneself to see where one’s interests lie and how to protect them.”

  “I mean, look to your heart; find out why you ended up here.”

  “I did not incarcerate myself.”

  “Who, then, has jailed you?”

  “Let me tell you. Sikiokuu and Kaniürü are my enemies. They want me to die in prison. Why? Because they don’t want me to continue as chairman of Marching to Heaven. They want to make sure that I am not around when Marching to Heaven begins. They want to be the only ones controlling the benefits from the entire project. But you wait. They don’t know who they are dealing with, Mr. Wizard of the Crow. Help me. Please help me to break free from prison and I will never forget you.”

  “From which prison do you want to free yourself?”

  “Mr. Wizard of the Crow, this is a serious matter. How many prisons do you see around here?”

  “Two. One of the mind and one of the body.”

  “Then break the walls of these prisons with your mirror power.”

  “I did not bring a mirror with me.”

  “Oh!” groaned Tajirika in despair.

  “What if we make our own mirror?” the Wizard of the Crow asked suddenly.

  “How?”

  “Our minds. Is there any mirror greater than the mirror of the mind?”

  “Whatever you say” Tajirika said, happy that the Wizard of the Crow was now talking about using a mirror, any mirror, however made.

  “Close your eyes … Paint pictures of Kaniürü and Sikiokuu in your mind.”

  He wants to help me by disabling the power of the two ruffians, Tajirika told himself as he tried with all his might to imagine Sikiokuu and Kaniürü. But the images would not stay still in his mind’s dark mirror.

  “Now I see them, now I don’t,” Tajirika said. “They are in and out of focus.”

  “It does not matter if their images are indistinct,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “Now point at those who are ruining the country. Show me where they are.”

  That’s easy, Tajirika thought, as he stretched his hand and po
inted in the distance, but the finger kept on moving around like the images in his mind.

  “Over there,” Tajirika said, still pointing vaguely in front of him.

  “Hold it right there,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “Now open your eyes, and keep on pointing at the corrupt and the greedy.”

  Tajirika did as directed. His heart was bursting with joy at the imminent death of his enemies, greedy, corrupt robbers.

  “Look at your hand carefully. One finger is pointing at your enemies, and the three others are pointing at you.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “What don’t you understand? Do you remember the children’s story about the five fingers who set out to rob someone? Pinky says: Let’s go. Where? To do what? asks the finger next to it. To steal, says the middle finger. What if we are caught? asks the fourth finger. Do you know what the thumb says?”

  “I am not one of you,” Tajirika answered, playing the character of the thumb, ending with laughter.

  “That’s why the fat finger still remains apart from the other four to this day. One thief standing apart from the others and pointing at …”

  Tajirika examined his fist again. It was obvious that the pointing finger and the three others were pointing in definite directions. Where and what was the thumb pointing at? One could not tell. And suddenly he thought he knew what the Wizard of the Crow was driving at.

  “So even children’s stories can teach us a thing or two about the ways of the world?” Tajirika said excitedly. “Mr. Wizard of the Crow, I now know what you have been trying to make me understand: Like these four fingers, the foolish take definite positions. Everyone knows where they stand. I have been too definite in the company I keep. I should maintain at all times the deceptive appearance of the thumb. Mr. Wizard of the Crow, thank you, thank you a thousand times.”

  “No wonder Jesus wept!” said the Wizard of the Crow loudly, as if talking to himself, clearly frustrated.

  “Why do you say that Jesus wept?” Tajirika asked, genuinely puzzled by how the mind of the Wizard of the Crow worked. He was now into the Bible.