“So NyawTra, the billboard that you planted is now bearing fruit that even the Buler is glad to gather. In short, a simple billboard is about to change the history of Aburiria, the history of Africa, the history of the world. And everyone gains a little from this mania, including you two.”
NyawTra and Vinjinia looked askance at each other, wondering how they were going to benefit from a billboard that simply announced that the company was now hiring temporary staff.
Tajirika felt good inside. “So congratulations,” he told them, laughing, his half-shaved chin moving up and down rhythmically.
“For what?” asked Vinjinia.
“Who do you think will be running the firm in my purposeful, patriotic absence? You, my faithful duo. You, Vinjinia, are now the acting general manager of Eldares Modern Construction and Beal Estate, and you, NyawTra, the assistant general manager.”
He paused to take in the gratitude from their eyes at the promotions he had just announced.
“And no coup d’etat against the absent boss!” he joked. You must not remove the billboard: as far as the public is concerned I am still indisposed and therefore unable to come to the office. When answering the phone or talking to people, I want you to remember at all times that I am still ill. If these people want any business that might come this way, they are to make themselves known to the acting general manager, Mrs. Vinjinia Tajirika, and leave their envelopes with her. But should there be some who insist on speaking to me personally, then, Vinjinia, call me at home and connect me to the person, but only after the person has added a considerable sum to the envelope as an inducement for the sick to leave his bed to pick up the phone. These promotions are my way of saying thank you to both of you for conspiring to take me to the Wizard of the Crow. His powers have already changed my life.”
Nyawlra quickly glanced at the corner where Kaniürü was sitting and saw that he was still there, absorbed in his paper. He is just pretending to read, Nyawlra said to herself, for she was sure that his eyes and ears and nose were taking everything in. Despite this, Nyawlra decided to squeeze more information out of Tajirika about the coming dedication of the proposed site for Marching to Heaven.
“What day is the Ruler going to bless the site?” she asked as if making talk without the slightest interest in the actual date.
“I don’t have all the details,” Tajirika told her. “But don’t worry. As soon as I know them I will let you know. I would like you both to be present. What did I tell you, Nyawlra? I will never forget you. Since you started working for me my affairs have been running smoothly, and I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation. On the blessed day I shall ask my friend Minister Machokali to have you stand on the platform in front of the Ruler so that he and the whole world will know that it was you and me who set the lines of people in motion. The Ruler might even shake your hand as he once shook mine …”
He looked at his right hand, and for a second or two there was disbelief and dismay on his face.
“What happened to my glove?” he asked, looking at Vinjinia.
Vinjinia sensed an impending explosion and quickly moved in to contain it: she explained that she had taken it off thinking that his enemies may have tampered with the glove out of envy of the hand that smelled of the Ruler’s. But to the utter relief of Vinjinia, he was not angry.
“Then my enemies will die of envy, because on the day of the dedication of the site this very hand will shake that of the Ruler, and this time I will thwart them by not wearing a glove that would indicate the spot blessed by his touch. Nyawlra, take note of that. After the Ruler touches your hand, no glove!”
He stopped himself and collapsed in hysterics.
“Yes, you and I must have released these daemons in support of Marching to Heaven. We removed the other billboard, NO VACANCY: FOR JOBS COME TOMORROW, just in the nick of time. And see the results! These university boys who claim to be the Movement for the Voice of the People opposed to Marching to Heaven are now in a dark hole, completely isolated. Their propaganda against the project has come to naught: everywhere people are now voting with their feet, thanks to you and me. Up with the billboard! Those boys will die with envy when they see you, their age-mate, shake the Ruler’s hand. But remember, no glove … Leave that to me,” he added, attempting self-deprecating humor.
He continued laughing, amusing himself.
Kaniürü could no longer contain himself; his head rose from his newspaper to look at the center of this hilarity.
18
At the close of business, Nyawlra took the unusual step of asking Vin-jinia for a lift to the bus stop. She wanted to avoid any possible encounter with Kaniürü, but she also wanted to get home early.
On the bus ride home, all her thoughts were on Kamltl. She recalled how they had first met in Tajirika’s office; how she had empathized when he told about his more than three years of fruitless job searching; how she had felt his humiliation at the hands of heartless Tajirika; how later that same night they had been chased by A.G. across the prairie; and how they talked through the night, on the verge of carnal intimacy.
Now they hardly ever talked about that moment, even in jest, and neither had they come close to repeating it. Otherwise, she was at peace with Kamltl and surprised herself by opening her heart to him. Yet she was careful about revealing details of the movement: its members, leadership, and plans. In all personal matters, she felt that she could talk to him without embarrassment. He was unlike most men she had encountered; he had no set views of a woman’s place in the world. She felt close to him, yet she was haunted by a question: who was Kamltl, really?
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.
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