Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong

  Nyawlra did not believe in divination, prophecy, or the power of magic potions to change hearts and minds. She did not believe in the material existence of good and bad spirits. People built their own heaven or hell through their deeds on earth. If they abuse themselves and others, they are merely stoking the fire of a hell of their own making, a terrible legacy for those to come. Good deeds, on the other hand, are worthy of inheritance by future generations. Her guiding principle was simply Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You. Yet her skepticism about rites of magic was being shaken by KamTtT. How was he able to see into the souls of people? What was it that A.G., the old man, and now Tajirika saw in KamTtT? How, for instance, was it possible for Tajirika to leave three bags of money behind without so much as a hint of regret or a whimper of protest, she wondered, knowing as she did how much he loved and worshipped money?

  As for herself, she had to admit that KamTtT had also touched her life. She could not tell what it was, but since meeting him she did not see life quite the same way; it was as if just his being there gave her something to smile about, even in the face of the scandals and cruelties of the state. The way he had dealt with Vinjinia and Tajirika made her feel proud of him. There was no rancor in his manner, no lust for revenge against a fallen enemy, unless relieving the Tajirikas of three bags of money could be termed revenge. As KamTtT had questioned Tajirika about his malady, a picture of the nature of the illness had also formed in her mind, and she felt as if KamTtT understood it as pervasive among the rich and educated of AburTria. Perhaps this explained in part what was wrong with the leadership of the land and the incredible turns the country had taken since independence.

  She noticed without quite acknowledging it that whenever she thought of KamTtT she felt indefinable warmth suffusing her being, making her heart race with anticipation. But anticipation of what? She was unsure; all she knew as she got off the bus and crossed the road was that she missed him. They had parted only that morning, but for her it was as if they had not seen each other in years.

  At the Santalucia shopping center she decided on how to celebrate being with him this evening. She would do the cooking. She bought some rice, tender mutton, lasciviously ripe tomatoes, fragrance of parsley, and two candles. She imagined the course of the evening over and over. She would cook, they would sit at the table facing each other, playing footsie; they would sit by the fireside and chat, enjoying the play of shadows on the walls. Her vision of this togetherness made her feel giddy. She felt like singing, but no particular tune came to mind.

  In recent days she had tried to get home early to avoid the formation of the evening’s queue for the wizard’s services, these men who stood waiting to be empowered with evil. She and Kamltl, as a result of them, hardly ever had the time to talk, except after midnight. In recent days the line had become progressively thinner and shorter, but even so, the few who would be there tonight were bound to interfere with her arrangement for a candlelight dinner for two. She grew defiant; she would not let them ruin her evening.

  She knocked at the door four times, their secret signal. She waited for him to open the door, a smile forming. She tried the doorknob, a trifle impatient. The door was shut tight. Maybe he was having a bath, she told herself. She took out her key and opened the door. She stood and waited for a sign of life in the house. She checked all over and noticed that even Kamltl’s bag was gone. She sat down on the bed, drained. Where was Kamltl? Where had he goner

  19

  It is now past midnight, the fourth night since you went away without a trace, Nyawlra scribbled in a notebook, and I find myself unable to fall asleep. The hours of the day and the hours of the night seem all the same to me. I have been going to the office but I feel like a sleepwalker in the streets ofEldares. I have nobody with whom I can talk about you, and even if I had, I don’t think that there are many who can see you as I do. I write to myself to still my heart, but no matter how I try I cannot find words to say how I felt when I came home that night and found that you were gone.

  I think about you day and night. Each day has had its pains, memories, and worries. I do not know whether you are alive, in the hands of the police, or dead, killed by thieves, though it is hard to distinguish between the police and thieves in our country. But what would a thief want with your bag, containing as it does only a beggar’s suit of rags? On the other hand, why would the police arrest you? What would they want from you? They say that desperate times call for desperate measures; the other night I even found myself wishing that I might bump into A.G., hoping that he would blab something about you. Then I remembered thatA.G. thinks that you and I are one; in his eyes, there is only one Wizard of the Crow, who can manifest himself in male or female form. No, A.G. cannot help me.

  During Kamltl’s disappearance, it seemed to Nyawlra that her house was encased in unrelieved sepulchral silence. As she sat on the bed the first night, staring at nothing, she remembered that the nighttime queue outside her house would be starting up soon. What was she to tell these people? How would she send them away? The last thing she needed was a reminder of his absence. She decided to do what she thought Kamltl would have done were he in a similar predicament: use their fear of witchcraft to send them away. She wrote on cardboard: YOUR ENEMIES HAVE PLACED EVIL ON THESE GROUNDS TO ENSNARE YOU: I HAVE GONE TO GET CLEANSING POTIONS; DON’T BOTHER COMING BACK LOOKING FOR ME: I WILL PUT UP AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THE NEWSPAPER TO ANNOUNCE MY RETURN.-WIZARD OF THE CROW. She hung the board on the wall outside, shut the door, and put out the lights, preferring to move about the house in the darkness. She felt as if there were hundreds of eyes staring at her in the dark, and she felt safe only in bed.

  Since parting with her husband, Nyawlra had gotten used to living alone. She hardly ever entertained in her house. Even her girlfriends from her days in school and college used to visit her more at her job than at home. Her two cousins were the only ones who came to see her at the house, but that was mostly on weekends. At first it was hard living in a house alone. But over time she came to enjoy and appreciate her freedom. She did not have to explain to anybody where she had been, how she had spent the day, or why she was late coming home. She had been answerable only to herself. Why, then, this sudden loneliness after the disappearance of someone she hardly knew?

  Her makeshift sign had had the desired effect; later when she peered through the window she saw no shadows of men lingering in the streets. Over the next few days and nights, the unwanted visitors had dwindled to none. By the fourth day she took down the sign.

  Completely preoccupied with Kamltl, Nyawlra would comb the papers for news of accidents or legal proceedings, at once hoping and fearing to find Kamltl’s name.

  A thought crept into her mind. What if Kamltl was not what he had pretended to be but was actually a police agent sent to entrap her? Might this not explain Tajirika’s cryptic comments about movement members being her age-mates and finding themselves in trouble? Was Tajirika being sincere when he promised to introduce her to the Ruler? Her mind also raced with suspicions about Kaniürü’s presence at the Mars Cafe so early in the morning. But when she recalled Kamltl’s voice, face, and laughter, as well as his concern for others’ well-being, she calmed down.

  Her second and third nights alone were made easier by having attended scheduled meetings of the movement. She had reported everything she knew about the plans for Marching to Heaven. She’d told them that the Ruler and his Minister for Foreign Affairs intended to take the Global Bank missionaries to where the queues were thickest and longest to prove that people were voting with their feet in support of Marching to Heaven. Most important, the government would soon select a day for the Ruler to dedicate the site for Marching to Heaven. At great length, they debated how to respond. Some suggested distributing more leaflets to expose the Ruler’s cynical plans and urge people to dismantle the queues as a means of thwarting the plans to exploit them. Others argued that since the queues were the result of high unemployment, there was no way the
people would abandon them. Another course of action was debated: how to make use of the queues so as to steal the Ruler’s thunder.

  Until now, the only free spaces in Aburlria were the churches and mosques and other authorized places of worship; liquor stores, bars, and other authorized alcohol consumption centers; and prison yards and police cells-wherever authority brandished its fearsome might, fearless of the words of unarmed inmates. The unemployment queues constituted such a site of democracy where gatherings did not require police permits. The movement decided that whenever they wanted to have a meeting, they would form a queue. They would use the queues for purposes of political mobilization.

  Members decided that, come what may, they would disrupt the Ruler’s dedication as they had his birthday. On top of what she was already doing, gathering information on Marching to Heaven, Nyawlra had been further charged with gathering anything and everything about the government’s plans for the day of dedication.

  Nyawlra welcomed these sessions and tasks, for they distracted her from her inner turmoil, her doubts regarding Kamltl. But as soon as she left the meetings, his many faces would invade her peace of mind with an intensity verging on vengeance. Yet she concluded that he was a man of wisdom and integrity whom the movement could usefully have recruited. But still, how could he have left without saying good-bye? How could she have trusted him?

  Whenever she’d felt low in the past, Nyawlra had played her guitar. The sound of music from a guitar had acted as therapy after her car accident and after her divorce. Now she took it from the wall and tried picking the strings. But she felt as if the sounds were deepening instead of alleviating her sorrow. She hung it back on the wall.

  Then suddenly anger seized her. What was it that had blinded her into believing that Kamltl was any different from any other male? I received him in my house and even gave him space for his witchcraft nonsense, and what does he do in gratitude? The anger gave her new energy. She must come to grips with herself.

  On the fifth day she woke up, made some tea, and sat at the table. She did not even want to look at the couch, Kamltl’s bed. Nothing, no memory of laughter, was going to distract her from her resolve. She took out the letter she had written to him, and after reading it she calmly tore it into small pieces, some of which fell down to the floor by the legs of the table. Then she thought it better to burn all those pieces of paper so that the words would vanish forever, as if they had never been written or thought.

  As she bent down to retrieve them, she noticed a note not in her handwriting. It was Kamltl’s hand. He had written her a letter and must have put it on the table. It had fallen, and she had failed to see it until now.

  20

  There was a time when the vast prairie surrounding Eldares was the domain of wild animals: rhinos, elephants, and hippos. In those days a traveler was likely to find leopards and lions lying in the grass, waiting for their prey among the grazing herds of zebras, dik-diks, duickers, bushbucks, gazelles, impalas, kudus, elands, warthogs, hartebeests, and buffalo. A most common sight was that of giraffes loping along or simply towering over the thorn-trees of the prairie. Occasionally an ostrich would scuttle across the prairie, and if a traveler was lucky he might find a newly laid ostrich egg inside a sand nest. But things had now changed. The wild animals had abandoned the prairie, leaving it to the emaciated cows and goats whose ribs protruded in times of drought when the grass completely dried up.

  The prairie ended abruptly at the foot of ridges forming a gigantic semicircle. The ridges were often covered in mist so that from a distance they looked like a continuous one, and it was only after reaching the foot that one could marvel at their natural formation of ascending steps to the misty sky. Each ridge was a series of hilltops, which against the light of the setting sun, looked like undulating silhouettes of cow humps. But there were a few times when the wind swept the mist away and the ridges, hills, and mountains would reveal their breathtaking beauty, sun rays dappling the forest trees with their mellowing leaves of green, yellow, and orange. Sometimes when the sun is rising or sinking one can glimpse a rainbow arched over the hills.

  This forest was now threatened by charcoal, paper, and timber merchants who cut down trees hundreds of years old. When it came to forests, indeed to any natural resource, the Aburlrian State and big American, European, and Japanese companies, in alliance with the local African, Indian, and European rich, were all united by one slogan: A loot-a continua. They knew how to take but not how to give back to the soil. The unregulated clearing of forests affected the rhythm of the rains, and a semidesert was beginning to creep from the prairie to the hills.

  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.