Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong

  Those who had thought that the Global Bank was on a mission of doling out dollars directly instead of to the State were a little disappointed; some even groaned in protest, but they assumed that Machokali was only dampening expectations, that the real thing would be announced by the Buler or by the leader of the Global Mission.

  Machokali, who did not want a repeat of the public display of interministerial tensions that had surfaced at the birthday ceremony, did not give any other minister an opportunity to speak. After his opening remarks he quickly announced that various performing troupes would now entertain the Buler and his guests, preparing people for words of wisdom from the great leader himself.

  First were schoolchildren from Eldares and its environs, singing mostly in praise of the leader’s well-known trips abroad in search of food for the people, particularly in times of drought and famine. His cry on behalf of the people had reached even the ears of the Global Bank, who had now sent a mission to Aburlria to give money for Marching to Heaven. They sang of their hope that the project would be completed as soon as possible. Then the Ruler would be at one with God.

  Machokali was ecstatic: the songs had succinctly summarized the major themes of the project. He asked the crowd to give the children a round of applause. Didn’t you hear what they said? he asked the crowd rhetorically. He who is close to God will always be the first to close in on His blessings.

  Most of the other groups, including adults, ended their songs and dances with the same praise for the leader and his efforts on behalf of Aburlria in the capitals of the Western world. Holding his customary club and fly whisk, the Ruler received these praises with a broad smile, leaning now toward his guests on the right or left to remark on the detail of the performance. At other times he would simply raise his fly whisk as if conferring a blessing.

  And now the turn of the women. The expectation was that their songs and dances would climax in prolonged ululation, a prelude to the main item, the Ruler’s speech. Women’s performances, particularly by those advanced in years, always produced a stir in audiences, as if those present identified with the women’s celebration of youth in age. A similar air of predictable anticipation was now pervasive.

  Sikiokuu, who resented not sharing the limelight, now found, in the women, an opening to ingratiate himself. He walked up to the leader to tell him that at some appropriate moment it would be nice and an excellent photo opportunity for the Ruler to mingle with the dancing women and even attempt a step or two himself. He should then invite some of the diplomats to join him, for that way the whole world would see that the Ruler was truly a man of the people. Machokali could not oppose an idea that seemed to please the leader so enormously, but he modified it by proposing that it would be better for the Ruler to do so after his speech, during the grand finale with all the singers and dancers grouped together. The Ruler was pleased with the phrase grand finale and agreed.

  And now, boomed the voice of Minister Machokali, here are the women.

  The women, Nyawlra now among them, walked in pairs into the arena from every direction, dressed no different from the crowd. Nothing in fact stood out except their disciplined formations and dignified entrance. They were silent, somber, as if in a funeral procession. In response, the crowd, too, grew silent, watching the seemingly endless queues of women with awe. When those at the head of the separate formations reached the part of the arena nearest the platform, they crossed, turned around, and moved toward the seated crowd, where they sat seemingly only to rise and continue their procession. It was difficult, after a few seconds, to tell whether those who were now marching were the same as before. From the platform it appeared as if the formations had no beginning and no end, or rather it was one movement with the end and the beginning being the multitude. Their continuous movement remained extremely disciplined. The Ruler was touched by this display of support expressed with such solemnity; he raised his fly whisk and waved it as a sign of respect for and appreciation of their devotion to Marching to Heaven.

  And then the fly whisk fell and his heart sunk; he became agitated, as did everybody else on the platform. The women had suddenly stopped moving. They stood absolutely still, facing the platform, their fingers pointing at the Ruler, and with one voice they shouted: Set Rachael free! Set Rachael free! Their chant was deafening, and those on the platform seemed dazed by their audacity.

  “And then, just as planned,” Nyawlra told Kamltl, “all of us in the arena suddenly faced the people, our backs turned to the platform. All together we lifted our skirts and exposed our butts to those on the platform, and squatted as if about to shit en masse in the arena. Those of us in the crowd started swearing: MARCHING TO HEAVEN IS A PILE OF SHIT! MARCHING TO HEAVEN IS A MOUNTAIN OF SHIT! And the crowd took this up. There were two or three women who forgot that this was only a simulation of what our female ancestors used to do as a last resort when they had reached a point where they could no longer take shit from a despot; they urinated and farted loudly. Maybe need or fear overcame them, or both.”

  Some foreign diplomats laughed out loud, thinking that this was a humorous native dance, but when they saw that state officials and ministers were not laughing, they restrained themselves and assumed that, pornographic as the act might have seemed, it was actually a solemn native dance.

  The Ruler was of course solemn because he did not know what to do: walk away or stay. The police raised their guns, waiting for the order to fire, but even they were not sure at whom or where they should start shooting.

  Machokali felt like crying. Why oh why had he asked the women to perform? Why had he not stopped it at schoolchildren and official youth? He knew as well as anybody that no entertainment of state dignitaries such as these would be deemed authentic without a performance by women. Still, in hindsight, a sin of omission on his part would have been preferable to this heinous and disgusting scandal enacted under his very nose.

  Although he was not so foolish as to openly show it, Sikiokuu was one of the very few on the State’s side who felt genuine mirth. Anything that brought ruin to his rival’s schemes was always a joy to him. The only thing that nagged him was his having suggested that the Ruler mingle with the women, but he quickly dismissed this concern because fortunately the Ruler had not acted on his initial recommendation, thanks to his rival’s interference. Still, he hated to think of his fate had the women squatted to shit with the Ruler and foreign diplomats mingling among them.

  The police chief ran to the Ruler to ask for permission to fire in the air. Rloody fool, the Ruler said, that will make this crowd riot, and what will you then do? Kill them before these cameras? The microphone was live and their remarks were heard, but people who did not know what was really happening assumed that they were talking about the twenty-one-gun salutes planned for guests from the Global Bank.

  Soon the parading women had disappeared from the arena and were indistinguishable amid the seated multitude. For a few seconds those on the platform thought they had witnessed an elaborate conjuring trick.

  12

  Even the Ruler thought his own eyes had deceived him. Where had all the dancers of shame gone? He stood up to explain away the illusion and calm any nerves that may have been rattled by the women and the police chief. He tried to be glib, reminding people that they were after all in black Africa, and what they had seen and heard or thought they had seen and heard was black humor from an ancient Aburlrian ritual. But before elaborating on the ritual and its significance, he glanced at his guests to see how they were taking his attempt at humor only to see them all staring at something. He was back in his seat through an involuntary act of sheer amazement. Would this nightmare never endr

  The platform on which he and the guests sat had begun to sink slowly, as if a power from within the bowels of the earth were pulling it down. A liquid oozed from the platform, slowly forming a muddy pool. Had the platform been erected on a bogr

  The foreign diplomats and Bankers were among the first to flee. The Buler and his minist
ers stood up, trying to maintain dignity. Machokali, in response to a gesture from the Buler, grabbed the microphone to announce that the ceremony was officially over. When Machokali next looked around the Buler and the other ministers were nowhere to be seen. The muddy pool had grown bigger, and his shoes were now half sunk in the darkish mess. The smell was that of a mixture of urine and shit, but he could not tell for sure what the substance was. He ran toward his car, no longer caring what was happening around him, and he spotted the Buler and other ministers beating a hasty retreat in their own cars.

  Some tellers of the story claim that they did see the Buler and the ministers sink in the bog and police officers pull them out to safety. Others dispute this, insisting that the platform sank after the dignitaries had fled. This they had seen with their own eyes, so they asserted. But all versions agreed that there was indeed a mysterious foul-smelling pool.

  “I myself did not see the pool, but something must have happened to make His Mightiness run away like that,” Nyawlra told Kamltl. “I can only assume that the sewage system installed by the colonial administration and never since maintained or repaired had run amok.

  “But at the moment of our triumph our thoughts were not on whether or not there had been a pool or even its implications; we simply basked in the afterglow of having made it clear that not every Aburlrian was happy with incurring more debt to finance Marching to Heaven or being ruled by a heartless despot. You do not have to look too deeply into it to know that a man who could so imprison his own wife in her home is a beast in human form! Rachael’s fate speaks volumes: if a woman who had been at the mountaintop of power and visibility could be made to disappear, be silenced forever while alive, what about the ordinary woman worker and peasant? The condition of women in a nation is the real measure of its progress. You imprison a woman and you have imprisoned a nation, we sang in a song of celebration.

  “When I went home that night I felt as if I had sprouted wings. All the sleepless nights, all the days spent running here and there, had been worth it. Driven away by Women Power, we had said,” Nyawlra told Kamltl, her eyes still flashing with pride at the memory of the women’s courage and their well-earned victory. “And that night I kept on repeating the words. Women Power did it.”

  The Ruler shut himself inside the State House for seven days, seven hours, seven minutes, and seven seconds, completely inaccessible to all, before calling the cabinet meeting that decided that he would seek refuge in state visits to the West.

  An immediate ban was imposed on queues involving more than five persons. No matter the time or place or business, it was illegal for more than five people to stand in line, whether entering a church or mosque or riding a bus or meeting in an office. If there were more than five people at a bus stop they could form several lines each of five people but not one continuous line. Queues were a Marxist invention, according to the Ruler, having nothing to do with African culture, which is characterized by the spirit of spontaneity. Mass disorganization-pushing and shoving-was to be the order of the day.

  But the ban only served to fuel the many stories about the day already circulating in the country, and it created many jokes about the fiasco. The site had been dedicated and blessed with piss, some argued back. The regime was almost swallowed whole by a bog, others would add, laughing so hard their ribs hurt, noting that all subsequent attempts to fill it with sand and stones came to naught. They said that the liquid would rise and reform above the sand and the stones. The City Council went into damage control: they hired a company to plant flowers all around the pool and another to pour perfume into the pool, but no matter what the companies did, the flowers would not grow and the perfume could not drive the stench away, and the City Council was finally forced to hire the same two companies, owned by Soi, Runyenje, Moya, and Kucera, to plant and maintain plastic flowers and trees all around while also regularly pouring perfume into the pool.

  Who were these women? was the question most frequent on people’s lips. The question, whether asked by those who had been absent or by those who claimed to have been present, was only the rhetorical commencement to more storytelling. Those absent would recycle what they had heard from others. Those who were present talked with the authority of eyewitnesses. They said that as they themselves left the field they saw that among the litter, empty cans and bottles, were many plastic snakes, and by now everybody knew that those plastic reptiles were the signature of the Movement for the Voice of the People. You mean the women were part of the movement? some would ask. What do you think, the others would say, and continue to narrate how disciplined the women had seemed and how they had miraculously melted into the crowd after they had asked the Ruler to lick their shitholes. It was their day; it was their triumph. Women? They may be silent, but, like silent streams, you can never tell their depth.

  “In the first two or three nights I could hardly sleep,” Nyawlra told Kamltl. “My mind was crowded with all that had happened. I was walking on clouds: what had been accomplished by the movement, against so many odds, excited me. Even when I was about to report for duty at the Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate, I was still in bliss. But imagine my shock at finding A.C. and his group of M5, including Kaniürü, waiting for me at the gates!” Nyawlra told Kamrö for a moment, reliving the terror she felt after Arigaigai Gathere stopped her in the streets and by chance dropped the news of the ambush. “Fortunately, or should I say through the magic of being mistaken for the Wizard of the Crow, my captors went home empty-handed.”

  Nyawlra had not known then about the arrest of Vinjinia and, like many others not in the know, she learned about it only long after Vinjinia had been released in accordance with the decision of the Ruler at the same cabinet session that came up with the idea of a series of state visits to Europe and America.

  13

  Machokali left the cabinet session haunted by a desire to know what Sikiokuu’s men had asked Vinjinia, and a get-together with his friend Tajirika was the best way to satisfy his curiosity without attracting much attention from his enemies. Unfortunately he and Tajirika were unable to meet when they were supposed to because Machokali soon became preoccupied with soliciting state visits. As the real purpose for such visits was a meeting with the directors of the Global Bank to finalize details for loans for Marching to Heaven, the USA visit was the most important, but additional visits to England, Germany, France, and Scandinavia would add glamour and dignity to the business at hand. But Machokali was having difficulty in securing invitations from those countries.

  All the ambassadors had more or less the same response. A state visit had to be mutually acceptable; even then it would take time to work out all the details. Machokali knew that a successful state visit was not something to be conjured up out of thin air, but he had trouble convincing the Buler, who kept reminding him that earlier state visits, despite the cold war, had taken no time to arrange-why not now when the war was over? Sikiokuu seized every opportunity to incite the leader in his presumptions.

  There was for instance the time when Sikiokuu went to see the Buler to give him a report on the status of the hunt for Nyawlra and what he had learned from Vinjinia and, because he did not have much to report, he adroitly drifted to the subject of state visits, intimating that if it had been he who was in charge he would long ago have secured the requisite invitations. Despite the Buler’s telling him to mind his own business and effect the arrest of enemies of the State like that Nyawlra woman, Sikiokuu was resolute and through persistence managed to persuade the Buler to pounce on the Global Bank open invitation, or better still, make a private visit, and while in the country turn it into a state or an official visit.

  When Machokali next conferred with the Buler, he was startled to find himself confronted with this firmly held position. He knew its source and managed a concession of sorts: the Ruler would go to the USA as a tourist and while there his Minister for Foreign Affairs would try to convert his stay into a state or official visit, and if that failed to mate
rialize Machokali would try to secure a meeting between the Ruler of Aburlria and the American president to take place before the one with the chiefs of the Global Bank. Even an hour or two with the president of the United States would send a positive message to the Bank.

  Machokali was, however, able to arrange from Aburlria for the Ruler to address the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan, New York; Machokali presented this as a big triumph of diplomacy. New York being also the headquarters of the Global Bank, the Ruler would kill two birds with one stone. He would have face-to-face talks with the directors of the Bank and then have a platform to tell the whole world about Marching to Heaven, the One and Only Superwonder in the Universe.