Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  7

  “His SIE has hypertrophied beyond our wildest imagination,” Dr. Wilfred Kaboca wrote to Clarkwell and Furyk, urging them to come to Aburlria at once, all costs, of course, to be picked up by the Aburlrian State. Uppermost in Kaboca’s mind was the note the Wizard of the Crow had once written and the rumors of the Ruler’s pregnancy circulating in the country. A sonogram was definitely in order, he added.

  In his diary, Furyk records his astonishment at the content of the letter, especially the reference to contractions and sonograms. But he also saw opportunities. Research into this phenomenon might throw scientific light on age-old theological disputes about virgin births. He also saw a commercial side to it and formed Clem&Din Productions Company, which sought and got the Ruler’s guarantee that, subject to some royalties to the Ruler, the company would have the sole global production and distribution rights of all the films and videos on all aspects of SIE.

  Din Furyk and Clement Clarkwell became the only beacons of hope for Kaboca and the Ruler. If only they could stop his body from conspiring against him!

  8

  Kaniürü had just gotten news about the Wizard of the Crow and was preparing to break it to the Ruler in person when he learned that His Mightiness had suffered another bout of bodily expansion and was now floating in the air. The Wizard of the Crow must be behind this, he thought, and, fearing that he might be the next target, decided to keep the news to himself until he learned more about the situation. And, to be on the safe side, he retreated to Kanyori’s place. The ever-faithful Kanyori did not raise any questions, not even when Kaniürü asked her to chain one of his legs to the bedpost and lock the door from the outside. She left a plate of food and a jar of water next to him. Kaniürü stayed inside the apartment the whole day. Whenever the wind shook the windows, Kaniürü would hold the bedposts with both hands. But in asking to be chained he had forgotten to seek support for other needs, and so when in the evening Kanyori unchained him he dashed past her without a word and stayed in the toilet for a long time. He feared that the noises he had emitted had reached Kanyori in the living room, and, embarrassed, Kaniürü returned to his own place to work out better preventive measures against any attempts by the Wizard of the Crow to take him by surprise.

  For a few days, he drove everywhere, even the shortest of distances, to make it impossible for the Wizard of the Crow to use the wind to blow him into the sky. For short walks, he got himself boots with soles reinforced with iron, but dragging the boots became cumbersome and after a while he settled for the much simpler idea of weights in his jacket. After a couple of days without anything stranger than constipation happening to him, he felt his courage come back. The news he had was too important to keep to himself, and he would not let slip an opportunity to endear himself to the Ruler.

  As his Mercedes-Benz sped through the streets toward the State House, Kaniürü reviewed things, and it dawned on him clearly that he was the only person who had crossed swords with the Wizard of the Crow and come out of the encounter with only minor bruises, a thought that further deepened his confidence.

  Though Kaniürü believed the claims that the Ruler was floating in the air, he retreated two or three steps in fright when he heard the Ruler’s voice come from above. But on raising his head and seeing the Ruler on a platform in a chair with a back that seemed to touch the ceiling, he thought of the final judgment, fell to his knees, and clasped both hands to his chest as if humbling himself before an angel of the Lord. He started moaning, Oh God, oh my God. Then he burst into a hymn of prayer: Nearer My God to thee … Nearer to thee …

  “Kaniürü, did I not command you and the others to stop comparing me to God?” the Ruler rebuked him from above.

  “What is the difference?” Kaniürü asked, with apparent sincerity that amused the Ruler.

  “What do you want from the Lord?” the Ruler said, smiling, and his slightly bantering tone was so calming to Kaniürü that his heart was no longer aflutter.

  “I know where the Wizard of the Crow is hiding out,” he exclaimed, unburdening his soul before the Lord.

  The Ruler kept silent as if he had not properly heard. Kaniürü thought the Ruler awaited more details and started arranging a narrative in his head, but this turned out to be unnecessary. For when the Ruler came to terms with what Kaniürü was saying it was he who now felt as if an angel of the Lord had come to him in his time of greatest need. A servant in need is truly a servant indeed.

  “What?” the Ruler asked.

  Kaniürü told him how, since the escape of the two wretched sorcerers, he had put all his cunning into their capture, but even he had to admit that he had gotten help from the gang he had deployed all over Santamaria and Santalucia.

  “As soon as I got the news, I said to myself, Kaniürü, you cannot keep this matter to yourself, not even for a second, and that is why I am here,” he said, still kneeling down.

  “You have done well,” said the Ruler, his right hand raised in a gesture of blessing. “Go home and continue in your righteousness, for I now know that I can call upon you at any time. But from now on, leave everything to do with this Wizard of the Crow to me. I will never forget your devotion.”

  Kaniürü hastened to his car, looking to neither the left nor the right. He was light as a feather despite the weights in his jacket. He could not even tell how and when he got into his car or even his residency.

  That night at home he left all the lights on. He hardly slept. The image that kept on playing in his head was that of the Ruler talking in a voice that sounded as if it came from Heaven. What besmirched the image was the ceiling that looked earthly, the walls that looked even more earthly, and of course the expanded Ruler, whose body, despite the straps, kept swaying slightly from side to side like a balloon in a light breeze. The fact that the straps and the platform were visible ruined the illusion of a deity in the sky.

  And suddenly Kaniürü felt as if he had sprouted wings and was about to rise and float in the air like the Ruler. He, an art student, had seen, for the first time in his life, a definite role for art in human life, or at least in his life, in ways more useful than what had been wrought by his forgeries of Sikiokuu’s signatures and drawings of the Wizard of the Crow on a poster for a wanted fugitive.

  He would place his chosen God in a tangible heaven, and it was then that he thought he knew the full meaning of the words of his namesake, John the Baptist, when he said: And behold I saw a new heaven and a new earth. Amen.

  For his part, no sooner had Kaniürü left his presence than the

  Ruler had phoned Wonderful Tumbo, the officer in charge of the Santamaria police, to give him instructions: The time of the Wizard of the Crow is up. I want him here. Right away! Alive!

  9

  When Kamltl got off the mkokoteni he went to Maritha and Mariko, just as Nyawlra had instructed him. The sun was setting. His long shadow fell on Mariko out in the yard. Impassively, Mariko shouted to Maritha that it looked as though some rough wind had blown a stranger into their yard. And Maritha shouted back, What is the matter? Why don’t you bring him inside? Mariko did not say a word to Kamltl but simply went inside, Kamltl following. Maritha pointed to a chair, but still neither she nor her husband addressed the visitor directly. One does not converse with hunger, Maritha and Mariko agreed, and after a few minutes tea and bread were set before the visitor.

  Kamltl did not know what to say to them because he did not know how much Nyawlra had told them about him and his present condition. His two hosts continued being oblivious of him; they just kept talking as if he were absent, even about matters that clearly concerned him.

  A cat with a white mark on its forehead appeared at the door, took in his surroundings, and went straight to the visitor, snuggling against him and purring all the while. Kamltl felt a strange sensation in his belly. This was the cat that he had seen at the charred remains of his shrine. He was about to acknowledge their previous acquaintance but thought the better of it and covered the awkw
ardness by stroking the cat.

  “Our wandering hero has returned,” said Mariko.

  “And he does not make friends easily,” said Maritha.

  “Yet he takes to the guest …” added Mariko.

  “As if they were old friends,” said Maritha.

  They went on talking to each other, hopping from one thing to another. Kamltl continued to stroke the cat while trying to glean what he could from their conversation.

  They talked of their volunteer services at All Saints.

  “If we can feed doves, surely we can do the same for a homeless beggar such as this one?” Maritha said to Mariko.

  “Yes, the basement is cozy, and the homeless know that they are on holy ground, where they must share and learn to live in peace.”

  This strange talk, he realized, was directed at him; they would take care of him.

  And that was how he became a dweller in the basement of All Saints. For the first few days his only company was the cat, which came at night to snuggle against him after being gone all day. Morning and evening, Maritha and Mariko would bring him food and make sure that all was well. On the rare occasion when Maritha or Mariko came alone, he or she would impart information by talking loudly and seemingly distractedly.

  “There is a lot to do in this church. I will wipe the pews this morning, but still I must return in the evening. And my birds? They have a language of their own. And to think people don’t believe me when I say that a dove has sent me a message that humans should take courage; that no night is so long as not to end in dawn!”

  On another occasion: “Oh, I don’t know how this drama outside the grounds of Parliament and the courts will end. Thousands of people descending on the place from all over the country! Why do they keep on pestering the Ruler about his pregnancy? Don’t they know that though men can plant, they can’t produce?”

  At times he had to restrain himself from laughing at their antics. Mostly he thought about the Limping Witch, her unique elegance of mind and body, and whenever he recalled how she had also fooled him with her limping legs and twisted face, he felt his spirits rise even more in joyful appreciation of her resourceful daring. He was aflame with the desire to touch Nyawlra, hear her talk, see her laugh, or just be in her presence. Yet, his euphoria aside, he would often brood on the dangers to which she was now exposed, which made him become fearful, sad, and anxious.

  And then one night two other homeless came to the basement. It was good to have company besides the cat, hitherto his sole companion. But when in the morning he woke up to find the newcomers stealing glances at him, he felt a coldness in his tummy. It was Njoya and Kahiga. The officers had successfully tracked him down to this place, and now there was no escaping them. Kamltl decided that his best defense and offense lay in silence.

  “Don’t worry” Njoya hastened to tell him. “We know that you are the Wizard of the Crow, but we shall not let this out to anybody, not even to this man and woman. Let them continue their taking you for a homeless. We two are now the real homeless, but we shall continue to pretend that you are one of us.”

  He learned of their dismissal and indeed from their ceaseless chatter he gleaned enough to help him fill up the empty spaces of his knowledge of what had been going on in the country.

  But what do they really want? wondered the Wizard of the Crow again, but he did not have long to wait. What they wanted to tell him was for his ears alone, and even as they said so they had already started approaching.

  The cat meowed and left the basement, and its departure seemed like a signal for the next act. With Kahiga crouching over his left ear and Njoya his right, they intensified their whispering.

  The Wizard of the Crow was puzzled, for though they spoke in earnest, what they said did not make sense. Did he hear right that the money he had buried in the prairie had given birth to three dollar-producing plants, later eaten by an army of strange-looking termites, allegedly sent by him to the State House?

  “You did a good thing to send the termites,” they told him. “The Ruler has not a grain of gratitude in him.”

  They became a nuisance. If he moved a step back, they moved with him, and if he turned they did the same, each clinging to his chosen ear.

  It was a Sunday morning, and with the cathedral seething with worshippers, the hymns and prayers above incongruously interacted with the ceaseless whispering around his ears.

  And then suddenly came an even more jarring note: the sound of a bullhorn.

  “We know the sound of that bullhorn,” added Kahiga. “Please, tell us the secret,” he pleaded urgently.

  “You can surely save our families with just a few words,” added Njoya.

  “Please tell us the secret of growing money,” they urged him in unison.

  At long last it was out. So all of them, the Ruler, Tajirika, and these two, were after the secret of money growing on trees? But that thought was now superceded by the more immediate worry of what they said about the bullhorn.

  Just then the cat meowed again, twice. It had come back to him. And then he saw Maritha and Mariko at the far end of the basement beckoning him to follow.

  All at once he made a decision. In the past he had escaped from many a tight situation because of words. His words. But now he had trapped himself inside a wordless silence. Who was he, without a voice?

  “Leave me alone,” the Wizard of the Crow suddenly said, just to get Njoya and Kahiga away from his ears and also prevent them from following him farther.

  The startled pair moved back a step but when it suddenly dawned on them that the Wizard of the Crow had actually spoken, they rushed back to his side and set their ears close to his mouth. He did not disappoint them.

  “It is unnatural for money to give birth to money” he said irritably. “Banks alone know the secret of money producing money. They hide the secret in ledger books and computer screens. I am now going for the word of God,” he said in a tone of finality, and began to move.

  Njoya and Kahiga brimmed over with joy. Was that why Tajirika had started Mwathirika Ltd.?

  “Here!” shouted Njoya as he and Kahiga ran after him.

  “We promised your assistant, remember?” said Kahiga, pulling a small plastic bag out of his pocket. “In our joy, we almost forgot.”

  “Your fallen hair,” said Njoya, as he and Kahiga headed for the exit.

  10

  In those days church and mosque attendance had gone up considerably, mainly because many religious centers preached and prayed for the banishment of Satan, who had come to stand for all that was wrong with the country. Some religious leaders had strongly defended the right of free assembly and had become heroes of the new democratic surge.

  No religious center attracted more people of so many persuasions as All Saints Cathedral. Orthodox and non-Orthodox, Christian and non-Christian, all made their way to the place. Debates about the origins of the cathedral’s popularity still rage to this day.

  Some said it stemmed from when Maritha and Mariko told weekly stories of their strange desires and their battles with Satan, pointing out that many of those who first came to the cathedral to hear of the couple’s temptations had joined the church even after the pair had stopped baring their hearts.

  Others asserted that the church’s rise started long before the confessions of Maritha and Mariko, tracing its beginnings to the Sunday when Bishop Kanogori chased away the daemons that the Ruler, riding a donkey in imitation of Christ, had brought into the building.

  Yet others insisted that one did not have to go beyond the personality of Bishop Kanogori himself. His reputation for voicing in the light of day the many concerns whispered at night had spread so wide and far that some even believed that he spoke with God. Many went there just to hear his interpretations of the Bible. One of his most popular was his rendering of the Sermon on the Mount, and when he declaimed, in a slightly tremulous voice, that the poor shall inherit the Earth, sighs of agreement could clearly be heard all over the place.

&
nbsp; It is said that the Ruler did not like his outspokenness, and so when some thugs raided his house one evening and roughed him up, everybody in Aburlria assumed the State House was responsible. The thugs had warned him to keep his mouth shut or else.

  But Bishop Kanogori did not; instead, he begged his congregation to pray for his attackers so that they might emerge from darkness into light. His church would always be open to receive them. This declaration was met with disbelief and uncertainty. It was one thing to forgive those who have sinned against us; another to welcome them into the building.

  The cathedral had also started attracting crowds from the People’s Assembly outside Parliament and the law courts, as well as the media. Kanogori’s sermons, albeit in truncated form, started appearing in the papers.

  One Sunday, when the bishop was in the middle of prayer, a bullhorn outside was heard making a strange demand. At first the worshippers ignored the bullhorn’s interruption; they remained on their knees, their eyes shut in prayer. But when the demand was repeated, people opened their eyes as the bishop rushed to conclude what he was saying. Those packed near the windows and outside the door were first to scream. The cathedral was surrounded by armed police. Marksmen had climbed the trees, their guns trained on the compound. The operations officer, Wonderful Tumbo himself, stood atop an armored car; through his bullhorn he ordered everyone to go inside; any who tried to escape would be shot on sight. The entire congregation was to remain inside until Bishop Kanogori delivered the fugitive: the Wizard of the Crow.

  Bishop Kanogori asked his followers to be orderly and peaceful. He was sure there had been a misunderstanding and it would all be cleared up once he spoke to the officer in charge. He had no idea what the police were talking about. Who was this Wizard of the Crow? Why would he be in the cathedral? Wonderful Tumbo told Bishop Kanogori that he was not in the mood for evasiveness. The church had to surrender the sorcerer or face the consequences.