Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  “Because he told them things, and even though they had ears they did not hear. He showed them things, and even though they had eyes they didn’t see.”

  He even uses the Book for his rites. That’s why his magic is so powerful, Tajirika thought to himself. If he puts his mind to it, there is nothing the Wizard of the Crow cannot do for a person like me.

  “And that is why it is said that even God can only help those who help themselves,” said the Wizard of the Crow.

  “Mr. Wizard of the Crow, how do you want me to help myself so that you can help me?” said Tajirika encouragingly.

  “Again, look into your heart. Beview whatever is inside you.”

  “How?”

  This man cares only about himself, thought the Wizard of the Crow. He hears and sees only what he wants. The Wizard of the Crow, Kamltl wa Karimlri, grew angry, very angry.

  He had not forgotten how Tajirika had humiliated him on the premises of Eldares Modern Construction and Beal Estate; he was flooded by the memory at odd times. He had never imagined that a human being could behave toward another with so much evil and malice. Kamltl had long decided not to seek revenge himself, for to do so would erase the difference between him and Tajirika. Don’t argue with a fool, the saying went, for people might not see the difference.

  But now he decided to jog the man’s memory and remind him of their first encounter to see if Tajirika would show some shame. People like these, so self-centered, needed to be told things directly, without ambiguity.

  “Do you want to hear a story?” he asked Tajirika.

  “Yes,” Tajirika said quickly. “I will gladly do so if the stories will help you spring me from this prison.’’

  “I am not so sure about this prison, but if you listen to the story very carefully it might help spring you from a prison bigger than this one made of stone and iron.”

  “I knew it. I knew that that’s why you came. I knew that there is no way you would have allowed me to rot in this prison. So please tell your story, begin it right away, and I promise you that I shall not even allow a cough to interrupt you.”

  14

  Have you ever heard of Mahabharata, Ramayana, or Bhagavad Gitar The three, or shall we say two since the Gita is a chapter in Mahabharata, are the key texts in the religion, culture, history, and philosophy of the Indian peoples. They were written in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, though now, like Latin, Greek, Geez, and Sabean, it is dead.

  Mahabharata tells of a war between the Kurus and the Pandavas, two branches of the same family. Arijuana, the hero of the Pandavas, is an expert archer, reputedly able to shoot an arrow at targets on the moon. But Arijuana and his teacher Drona hear of another archer, Ekalaivan, whose skills surpass those of Arijuana by far. He can shoot seven arrows into the mouth of a dog as soon as it opens its mouth, giving it no chance to bark. Ekalaivan had taught himself those skills but under the shadow of the statue of Drona, which Ekalaivan himself had erected as a source of inspiration. Still, Ekalaivan claims that Drona is his teacher. Now, the law, dharma, requires a student to give something to his teacher, as a token of gratitude. Although Drona never taught Ekalaivan, he demands his dues. Anything you ask, says Ekalaivan. Then give me your thumb. They cut off Ekalaivan’s thumb. Do you see the humiliation, the cruelty? Drona refuses to teach Ekalaivan, a son of the poor, but when the same, through his own creativity, rises to excellence, Drona disables him so that sons of the rich will have no competition. Arijuana’s superiority is affirmed by Ekalaivan’s forced inferiority.

  Do you think that this is a story of ancient India only? It is the story of our times. A rich man has come into riches through the housing business, buying and selling, developing and selling, overseeing construction and getting paid for it. To be fair, the rich man has been considerate and put up a billboard stating clearly that there are no jobs available. But you know how it is! Need, like love, is blind! A tired bird in flight, they say, will land on anything. So one evening a stranger looking for a job enters the man’s office. Even though it’s the end of the workday, the rich man agrees to interview the stranger. He scrutinizes the documents of the job seeker and asks him many questions. But what do you think the rich man does next? Please follow me, he tells the stranger, so that I can give you a proper interview. The rich man takes the stranger to the gate and asks him to read the billboard to test the stranger’s reading skills and comprehension. Now, before I go on, let me make clear that nobody can blame an employer for not having jobs. But think hard and tell me this: how does one find humor in humiliating the already humiliated? Tell me, Tajirika, why this joy at the cry of misery? How would you feel if someone derived joy from your wandering around this prison cell?

  Why did you do it, Tajirika? How did I wrong you by asking you for a job?

  15

  These revelations hit Tajirika with a force both unexpected and to him, now, seemingly inevitable. He recalled the encounter and knew, even before the Wizard of the Crow had confirmed it, that the stranger and the Wizard of the Crow were one. So that’s why, during the divination and cure of his white-ache, he had felt intimations of a previous encounter? Then, he had dismissed the feeling as a hallucinatory side effect of white-ache. And now it had come to this! Tajirika had never heard of dead languages, and he assumed that the Wizard of the Crow was talking about the languages spoken by the dead. The wizard was in possession of the secrets of dead sorcerers from Africa, India, the world. Faced with the new unknown, he felt terror grip him as never before. For a few minutes he remained frozen in his corner as his mind raced swiftly, feverishly, sinister images giving way to others even more sinister. Still, incredibly, the revelations seemed to throw a light, as he imagined it, on what had been a mystery.

  This wizard must be the source of all his troubles! He must have put a spell on the ground outside his office, sparking the queuing mania. The queues had started only a day or two after he had driven this job seeker from the premises of Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate. He had tied Tajirika’s tongue. He had put a spell on Vinjinia and NyawTra and turned them against him. He had not even been looking for a job but for an occasion to practice malice born of envy and I, an innocent, fell into his trap and gave him a reason to seek vengeance. He even stole my money.

  “I gave you three bags of money” Tajirika said, hoping this would mollify him and blunt the edges of his fury.

  “Your kind of money smells evil. You can have it back. I buried it in the prairie,” said the Wizard of the Crow, and to Tajirika’s incredulous consternation, he described the burial spot.

  Had he been sent now, once again, by Tajirika’s enemies? Brought to his cell at the midnight hour to entrap him with stories and lie about burying money in the ground? He could think of only one enemy with the clout and opportunity.

  Sikiokuu’s words haunted him: “Think very hard about…” His last words, and what happens next? The Wizard of the Crow mysteriously turns up in the cell. It was the wizard who had first diagnosed his wish to be white. The wizard had now been sent by Sikiokuu to do away with him once and for all. Sikiokuu had been toying with Tajirika, had even foretold, in his shady way, what would happen. Surely the wizard would start by cutting his fingers off. He probably would have killed me last night, except for my being awake.

  Death in human form was walking toward him in slow motion while he remained frozen in a corner, unable to move or do anything about it. Then and there, Tajirika decided that, come what may, he would not spend another night under the same roof with the murderous presence of this India-educated sorcerer who had already cast evil around his offices and home, making problems upon problems rain down on him like hailstones.

  Though his strategy was to escape death, his tactic was to keep the Wizard of the Crow engaged in conversation while Tajirika figured a way out.

  The clarity of the strategy and the tactics calmed him a little so that, despite the commotion of thoughts and images within, the words that now came out did not be
tray fear or anxiety.

  “I did not mean any harm. I assure you, the test was truly a little joke among men. In fact, I had expected that you would join me in laughter. I wanted to make the weight of not getting a job more bearable.”

  “Don’t you think you should think twice about that kind of humor? Such humor can bring about death.”

  Death? He has come out in his true colors. Witchcraft and statecraft have joined hands against me. What a powerful combination! This wizard has talked with the dead for a thousand years. He has read all the manuals of sorcery from ancient India and Greece to the present. Whether I am in or out of jail, there is no escaping the all-seeing eye, the all-pervasive power of the Wizard of the Crow. I am badly cornered.

  His situation was hopeless. He was depressed. But then a ray of sunshine: since the Wizard of the Crow could indeed see whatever he wanted to see from wherever he was, why did Sikiokuu bother to send him to the prison? All the Wizard of the Crow needed to do was capture Tajirika’s shadow in his mirror, scratch the shadow, and Tajirika would be gone. Sikiokuu does not want me to die just yet, Tajirika told himself, hope rising. Sikiokuu desperately wants to land a deal with me. He wants me alive, but of course if I refuse to do what he wants or am unable to deliver … But why should I refuse to do what he wants when I don’t even know what it is that he wants?

  Tajirika thought he had indeed seen the light: it was safer for him to be in the hands of Sikiokuu than under the continuous gaze of the Wizard of the Crow. Sikiokuu was more his type; they shared a common language of deceit and evasion. He, Tajirika, would bow, kneel, crawl, do anything to gain mercy from Sikiokuu. All in all, it was easier to deceive Sikiokuu than the Wizard of the Crow. Tajirika would weave tales and shift the blame for the origins of the queuing mania elsewhere. Why not blame his wife? Yes, he would blame it all on scheming Vinjinia. How clever, he thought, feeling really good about himself. This way he would shoot down three birds with one arrow: exact vengeance on Vinjinia for posing with the women dancers, no doubt having a good time while he had disappeared; save himself from the doom portended by the Wizard of the Crow; and, most important, avoid loss of thumbs and death.

  Soon, whatever doubts he may have had about being in danger from Sikiokuu vanished. The Wizard of the Crow posed the most immediate threat to his mind and body, and the only person who could save him was Sikiokuu. Tajirika could not afford to wait for night. He had to flee the power of witchcraft immediately and seek protection from the State. But what was he to do without provoking the ire of his wily nemesis? There was nothing he could do, he felt, and he sat there in despair, waiting for death. He regretted his inability to give Vinjinia a thorough beating, but in so doing, he remembered her churchgoing and prayers and started murmuring prayers for deliverance from death. His prayers were answered almost immediately, but in ways that even he could not have expected or imagined.

  Just then, two wardens who normally came to collect the bucket of shit and urine, and who had not done so for seven days, suddenly opened the door. Tajirika acted with a reckless instinct of self-preservation. Before the wardens could get to the bucket, Tajirika had sprung from his corner and grabbed it. He threatened to pour seven days of shit and urine onto the two wardens if they even so much as moved. They stood transfixed as Tajirika wobbled and stood between them and the door.

  The Wizard of the Crow, too, was taken by surprise and assumed that Tajirika had become unhinged. Indeed, during the conversations, Tajirika had seemed to make no sense at all. The weeks of isolation and torture have taken their toll, he thought. But when Tajirika began to speak and the Wizard of the Crow realized what was going on, he felt like laughing but did not, the better to remain a detached spectator of the proceedings.

  “Listen to me,” Tajirika was telling the prison wardens. “Get me away from this witch doctor. Take me to Silver Sikiokuu, the Minister of State in the Buler’s Office. Slap handcuffs on me. Or give them to me and I’ll do it myself to show you that I am not trying to escape from lawful custody. If you fail to do what I am telling you, or if I see any sign of resistance from any of you, I am going to pour the entire contents of this bucket onto your heads. For the last three days I have been shitting and urinating blood. I am suffering from that virus of death.”

  At the mention of the devastating virus, the two wardens smelled their own death in the air and commenced their supplications. They assured Tajirika that they had absolutely no grudge against him, that they completely understood him and sympathized with his plight, for they, for their part, would never dream of sleeping under the same roof as a witch doctor. So you see, you and we are on the same side in this and we shall take you wherever you want to go. They threw handcuffs at him and he clapped them onto his own wrists. They asked him to let them take the bucket, but he refused. It was his own shit, his weapon, he said, to the relief of the wardens, happy to be spared contact with his death-infected shit, but also to their greater anxiety, for now they were at the mercy of this crazy prisoner. Now in their company, he told them to make sure to lock the door firmly behind them. He did not want the Wizard of the Crow to escape.

  The Wizard of the Crow had looked on the madness with a mixture of pity and sadness. At the same time, he felt like laughing: his revelations had compelled Tajirika to carry his own shit, for the time being, at least.

  Outside, Tajirika ordered the men to lead the way and warned them once again not to do anything foolish, following closely behind with the bucket of his own shit dangling between his legs.

  The news quickly spread throughout the camp. The entire squad of the guards rose in arms. Police reinforcements arrived at the scene. But the wardens who were no more than a step from Tajirika kept on shouting: Leave him alone. He has it. He is in handcuffs. Don’t provoke him. His shit carries death.

  Thus they marched, guns cocked all around, until they reached the office of the chief of the Eldares Remand Prison. The chief, the armed guards, and the police reinforcements were all scared of the prisoner rumored to carry death. They knew that he was handcuffed so there was no pressure on them to take any action that might make the situation worse. When asked what he wanted, Tajirika remained consistent in his one demand: he must be taken to Sikiokuu.

  The camp chief called Sikiokuu: There is a prisoner here who has virtually taken over the camp with a bucket of shit. He demands to see you. What should we do with him?

  16

  What? Has Tajirika lost his head completely? This was Sikiokuu’s first reaction to news of the crisis. Anticipating the return of the Ruler, the last thing he needed was more aggravation to add to his stressed nerves. But the absurdity of the situation struck him: Tajirika taking over an armed camp, a bucket of shit as his only weapon? Sikiokuu cracked up, which momentarily served to lighten his manifold burdens. Yet the more he thought about it, the less amusing it became. Suppose the media found out that the chairman of Marching to Heaven had chased a detachment of the Ruler’s armed forces with a bucket of shit? Suppose they carried the picture side by side with that of the Ruler returning home with buckets of dollars for Marching to Heaven, a welcoming crowd of dancers and diplomats around him? He imagined the caption: THE RULER RETURNS HOME WITH BUCKETS OF DOLLARS FOR MARCHING TO HEAVEN. THE CHAIRMAN OF MARCHING TO HEAVEN GIVES MARCHING ORDERS TO ARMED GUARDS WITH A BUCKET OF SHIT. Horrible! Remove his handcuffs immediately, he ordered, and ask the man to surrender the bucket. Then, not trusting the camp chief to handle the matter with the necessary discretion— he was not even supposed to know the identity of the two prisoners in the cell—Sikiokuu dispatched his henchmen, Elijah Njoya and Peter Kahiga, to the scene to lead the negotiations.

  Tajirika insisted that he would hand his bucket over only after a meeting with the minister. He even had a say in the travel arrangements. While Kahiga sat behind the wheel and Njoya next to him, Tajirika sat in the backseat alone, a configuration that suited everybody. Tajirika would keep an eye on the officers, ready to douse them with shit if they tried to cross
him. The officers were spared having to sit next to the bucket.

  When they arrived at Sikiokuu’s, Njoya and Kahiga shielded their captive from public view, taking him through the back door.

  Sikiokuu motioned to Njoya and Kahiga to leave and join two other police guards in the outer room. Tajirika and Sikiokuu stood there sizing each other up.

  17

  What Sikiokuu saw in Tajirika was the look of a trapped, wounded animal. So dangerous was Tajirika’s look that Sikiokuu searched high and low to offer him a way out. He tried humor to ease the tension.

  “Hut, sasa, story zako? Ni nini tnakalau wanakubringiya kinaa? Nt haart wanakuitia?” Sikiokuu asked in Sheng.

  “I don’t much care for your outdated Sheng,” Tajirika snapped angrily, thinking that Sikiokuu was taking him lightly. “You and I are no longer children. I am not here to play Fathe and Mathe.”

  “I was just welcoming you, Mr. Tajirika,” Sikiokuu responded quickly, somewhat disappointed that his Sheng had been rebuffed. “What’s gone wrong between you and these policemen?” Sikiokuu asked, as if he himself had nothing to do with it.

  “Nothing,” Tajirika pressed on. “I want to talk man to man.”

  “Okay! But first let’s uncuff you, and please put that bucket down. Let my men take it out. It is stinking up the whole building.”

  Why should I trust you with my shit?”

  “My word is my bond.”

  “Swear in the presence of one or two of your police officers that no matter the outcome of our talks, you will never again put me in the same cell with the Wizard of the Crow.”

  “Only that?” Sikiokuu asked, completely taken aback by the request.

  “For now!” said Tajirika. “The rest is between you and me.”

  Despite his anger at the sorcerer’s intransigence, Sikiokuu had not planned on keeping him in jail for more than a day. As soon as the Wizard of the Crow used his sorcery to locate Nyawlra, Sikiokuu planned to release him. In fact, Sikiokuu had thought that if he kept the two together for one night, Tajirika’s scary stories of torture would terrorize the Wizard of the Crow and soften him up before their meeting the following day. A lesson in manners.